


A Shadow In The Human Heart

by augustrain



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, BDSM, Bodice-Ripper, Corporal Punishment, Dark Doctor (Doctor Who), Dom/sub, Dreams and Nightmares, Dubious Consent, Edwardian Period, Episode: s03e07 42, Episode: s03e08 Human Nature, Episode: s03e08-09 Human Nature/Family of Blood, Extremely Dubious Consent, F/M, Kink Meme, Light Dom/sub, Master/Servant, Punishment, Rape/Non-con Elements, Smut, Spanking, Tenth Doctor Era, dominant doctor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-19
Updated: 2015-11-29
Packaged: 2018-02-09 13:23:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 28,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1984575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/augustrain/pseuds/augustrain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A darker rewrite of Human Nature/Family of Blood. John Smith is plagued by strange nightmares and unfamiliar human urges of a decidedly scandalous variety. While warring sentiments in the fobwatched Tenth Doctor’s subconscious make him do some very out of character things, Martha is forced to play the dutiful housemaid to keep his true identity secret. She’s faced with a dilemma when what she’s long desired comes wrapped in a package she knows she shouldn’t accept. The question is, will he give her a choice? Follows the plot of of Human Nature/Family of Blood, with notable deviations. Adult, explicit sex, swearing, angst, hurt/comfort, dom/sub, dubcon, non-con (?), bdsm, het, plot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Rough Landing

Martha turned over in the cold, narrow bed, wrapping the blanket more tightly around her. It was thin, and scratchy, and gave precious little warmth.

This is what she hated most about the past, she thought ruefully. It seemed the mattresses were either packed with prickly straw or were hard as the ground. Though this one was definitely of the hard ground variety, at least it was better than the one they’d slept on in the Elizabethan inn, when they’d met Shakespeare. But then the Doctor had been beside her. Pouting and distant but still, there all the same, not an arms length away.

Now he was set up downstairs, in one of this inn’s grander rooms, with a nice fire and an en suite bath, while she froze her arse off up here in the third floor servants quarters. At least she’d managed to get him to sleep. What a mess he’d been!

Bloody chameleon arch, she thought. Bloody predatory aliens! Bloody Time Lord and his stupid bloody plan to “hide” them and where does she end up? In bloody fucking servitude, that’s where. Of all the places and all the planets. Any number of deserted tropical islands or hidden Edens to choose from, and where does the TARDIS take them? The bloody English fucking countryside in 1913, that’s where.

She turned over on her back, shivering and fuming. She wanted to scream, but couldn’t. She wasn’t alone. Her roommate, a dark-haired, haughty ladies’ maid called Anna, seemed to sleep soundly in the little bed beside her, impervious to the cold. It was so quiet that she thought she could hear every sound of the old country house; the wood settling, the muffled voices of male servants still talking in the dining room downstairs, the far away cry of a cat. She suddenly felt very sad and very alone.

Sure, she knew that the man sleeping downstairs was the Doctor. He had told her that he needed to change, and why. But in every way that mattered, it wasn’t him at all. Three months, he’d said. Three whole months, and this was only the first night.

“Do you trust me, Martha?!” he’d asked her. “I need you to trust me!” And she did.

She felt tears prick the corners of her eyes and the muscles in her forehead ached with the threat of crying.

“No,” she said aloud, swiping at her eyes with the sleeve of her nightgown. “Screw this. I’m not having this at all.”

Anna stirred beside her.

“Sorry,” Martha whispered as she swung her feet off the bed. “Go back to sleep.”

Anna grumbled and rolled over.

The moonlight coming in through the small window was enough for her to locate her clothes, and she pulled them on, fumbling with the many small buttons on her black dress. There, she thought, as she smoothed the thick fabric down over her petticoats. At least she was warmer now. She placed a cap over her loose hair and pulled on her ankle boots, struggling with the laces.

She could hear Anna shifting again but didn’t care. Stupid cow, she thought, remembering their conversation from earlier. Anna had not been able to stop staring at Martha’s complexion, or at her bare arms when she’d changed for the night. She’d even had the nerve to ask Martha how she’d managed to learn English, and if “Mr. Smith” had “picked her up” in the Boer wars!

“Yes!” Martha had said with barely concealed fury. “It was a two for one sale! Can you believe my luck?”

She left the rest of her things strewn about the room, not caring what Anna thought. She didn’t care how late it was. She was going to go and sleep in the TARDIS where it was warm, where she could listen to music or read one of her medical textbooks, maybe take a bubble bath. Somewhere that felt like home.

She was just turning the handle on the door when all of a sudden it opened inward and a body fell into her with a start. There was the flash of a small flame and something clattered to the floor.

“Goodness! Oh my goodness!” said a female voice. “I’m so sorry. You’ve scared the life out of me. And I’ve dropped my candle!”

“This is ridiculous,” Anna called plaintively from the bed.

“I’m so sorry ma’am,” whispered the girl, who pulled Martha out into the hall. She was small and mousy-haired. Martha remembered seeing her in the kitchen earlier, when the servants had offered her a meal. “It’s Smith, right?” the girl asked.

“Um, well it’s Jones actually,” Martha said, watching as the girl re-lit her candle from the lone burning sconce in the hall. “But yes, I’m with Mr. Smith. What is it?”

“Yes it’s about your Mr. Smith, I’m afraid,” the girl said tremulously. “They said he was ill when you arrived?”

“Ahh, yeah. Yes. He … he’s nearly better. We’ve been abroad and he … he had a fever. A bit of a relapse on the train journey, but I’m sure he’ll be fine by morning. He just needs his sleep.”

“Well, that’s just it, you see,” the girl said. “He’s, well, he’s up ma’am.”

“He’s … up?”

“Yes, ah, Jones is it? I’ve just seen him. He’s outside, under the moonlight ma’am. In naught but his underthings ma’am. It’s unseasonal cold tonight. He’ll catch his death if you don’t mind my saying.”

“Oh my god he’s what?” Martha said, heading for the stairs. There was a window at the second floor landing, which looked out towards the fields at the back of the inn. And there in the moonlit grass stood the Doctor. In pajamas. Her eyes widened as she watched him. He seemed to smash his right fist against his left palm angrily, then shake his right hand vigorously in the air. Then he held his arm stretched out in front of him, as if he were pointing.

“Oh my god,” Martha said.

“Sorry, is he mad, ma’am?”

“No no it’s … it’s just the fever. Must be back. He’s … dreaming. Quick, I’ve got to get him inside. Can you make sure no one sees us? I can’t have anyone seeing him like this. What’s your name?”

“Sarah ma’am.”

“Okay, Sarah, can you do that? Can you keep a watch for me on the stairs?”

“Of course.”

Martha hurried down and out into the chill night air, her skirts rustling over the wet grasses. He was standing barefoot in his striped pajamas near a fence, his face lit by moonlight. He looked pale and ghostly, his dark hair a riot.

“Doctor,” she said softly. “What are you doing?”

He didn’t answer.

“Doctor? Um, Mr. Smith? … John?”

That was who he was supposed to believe himself to be. According to the papers produced by the TARDIS, anyway. Mr. John Smith, history teacher.

“It isn’t working,” he slurred, like a drunk person, and began to shake whatever was in his hand again, stumbling backward slightly. She felt a rush of tenderness.

“Oh you poor thing, what have you done to yourself?” She rushed up to him and took his cold hands in hers. A pen. He had been holding and shaking and pointing a long black fountain pen.

“It isn’t working,” he said again. But the voice wasn’t his own, not really. The accent was too posh. She looked up into his face and he seemed lost and confused. Oh well, she thought, might as well play the part.

“Mr. Smith you’re unwell and you’ve had a bad dream,” she said.

“Have I?”

“Yes,” she reassured him, trying to begin guiding him back towards the waiting door of the inn.

“But … I think I’ve … I’ve lost something,” he said, still sounding confused.

“I’ll say,” she said under her breath. “Look, just please let me get you inside. You’ll feel better soon, I promise.”

“Oh alright, Martha,” he said. “It is Martha, isn’t it? You’re Martha?”

“Yes,” she said, draping his arm over her shoulders and fitting her arm around his narrow waist. His body felt hot though his hands were cold. “That’s me.”

“I know you,” he said.

“Yep, too right,” she said.

“No no no no, I do, I think I can remember …”

“Nope, no remembering,” she said, as they reached the door, closing it behind them. Young Sarah motioned to her from across the hall, giving her the all clear. Then she disappeared again.

“Quickly now,” Martha said, leading him up the stairs to the guest quarters.

When they reached the landing, he turned and slumped into her suddenly, his arms going drunkenly around her and his mouth grazing her ear, then her throat. His hands clasped around the small of her back. It sent shivers up her spine and over her scalp, and she felt her mouth fall open from the shock of his nearness.

“The terrible thing is,” he mumbled into her hair. “I get the … distinct feeling that I’ve … I’ve forgotten something quite important.”

His breath and the warmth radiating off of his torso through his pajamas was so much hotter than usual. Normally, he was always the first one to feel a chill, dressing in all those layers. Maybe he really did have a fever. Or maybe it was just his body adjusting to its new human parameters. Things must be a little haywire. Hands cold as ice. Chest like a furnace. The hair around his hairline and at the back of his neck was damp.

Feeling his breath on her skin like that made her a little dizzy, and she was suddenly aware of her breasts straining against her starchy Edwardian underthings. He still smelled the same. Her heart was beating faster, and she felt her nipples stand to attention against the fabric of her camisole.

“Martha,” he whispered against her neck, his voice still slurred, his arms around her tightening.

“Noooo,” she said. “None of that. Wow you really have turned human. Come on now.” She spun him around and with her hands gripping his arms from behind, she marched him towards his room.

Once inside, with the door firmly locked behind them, she pushed him onto his bed and threw a blanket over him. Her heart was pounding and she felt afraid to look at him. She wanted him, of course. But not like this.

She took the ridiculous pen from her pocket and tossed it onto a desk in the corner. He must have thought it was his sonic, the poor dear. Then she wondered, should she be worried?

She lit the bedside lamp and perched beside him on the bed. He lay with his eyes closed and his brow knitted, as if in pain, and pushed the blanket off.

***

The transformation brought about by the chameleon arch had been terrible to watch. He’d writhed and screamed in pain, crying out things with such force that the TARDIS hadn’t managed to translate them. They’d come out as gibberish to her, and Martha could only guess that they’d been Gallifreyan. Maybe the TARDIS was hurting along with her master, unable to decipher him. Martha had cowered in the console room, helpless as the Doctor shook and howled, unable to look away, as the whole structure clattered and rocked around them like an earthquake as they hurdled through the time vortex.

And then, darkness. Silence save for the TARDIS’s low hum, like an animal’s slow breathing. Gradually the lights came back on at half strength, and there was the Doctor, lying there on the floor, motionless. She ran to him and checked his pulse. It was fast, but steady. She put her head against his chest and listened: only one heartbeat. She stood back up. So it must have worked.

Before her, a screen was blinking on the console. In English it read: OPEN CHAMELEON HATCH.

“Chameleon hatch?” she said “What’s a bloody chameleon hatch?!”

There was a soft “ping” and a trap door sprung open to her right. She reached down through the grating and released a latch, so that something began to rise up. A tall steamer trunk, like a traveling wardrobe. Once it was fully risen and level with the grating, there was another soft “ping” and the doors sprang open. Clothing and documents fell out over the floor. Waistcoats, jackets, boots and dresses, bloomers and petticoats and a number of hats, both men’s and women’s. There were newspapers, and a bundle of other papers wrapped in string. Two train tickets (already stamped), identification, letters addressed to a “Mr. John Smith.” On one of them was written “accommodations.” She opened it.

“Dear Mr. Smith,” the letter began. “Your interview for the post of history teacher at the Farringham School for Boys is scheduled for 10 a.m. on Tuesday, 16 September. You will find that a room has been reserved for you at the Farringham Inn, where lodging will also be made available for your servant.”

“His what?!” Martha said aloud. “Oh, you have got to be kidding me.”

She skimmed the rest. The teaching post. Local sites in the town. Directions from the train station. She went and opened the TARDIS door to discover that they were inside a barn, with the orange light of dusk filtering through the rafters. Outside, an idyllic pastoral evening scene and a sign post pointing the way to the village, 1.5 kilometers away.

“Brilliant,” she thought sarcastically, and went back into the TARDIS to get changed.

She’d put a period overcoat and a hat on the Doctor, who had come to, but seemed hazy and confused. She decided that his brown suit would do just fine for now.

“I feel sick,” he kept saying, leaning against the wall with his eyes closed. She noticed already that his accent had changed, which unsettled her.

She managed to pack two small suitcases full of essentials, and with him leaning heavily against her, made off towards the village and life in 1913.

***

Observing him now as he lay sprawled on the bed, looking feverish, she cursed herself for not bringing any medical equipment with her. She’s been too flustered to remember. In the light of the dim lamp, she could see that a deep flush had climbed into his cheeks, and his hair was sticking to his forehead with sweat.

“Martha,” he called out, his eyes not seeming to focus. He reached out to her, and she took his searching hand in both of hers.

“I’m here,” she said. “I’m here and I’m not going anywhere, alright? God I wish I knew more about what was happening with you.”

She took his pulse again and this time it seemed more rapid, and irregular, skipping beats. She frowned, and touched his face with the back of her hand. He was burning up.

“Martha,” he groaned. “I can’t —”

“Sshhh, you’ll be just fine. You said I should trust you and that’s what I’ve got to do now. I’m sure this is just some process that has to … I don’t know, run its course.”

He pulled her towards him, so that her hand was against his chest. He was thin, but stronger than he looked.

“Hey, hey, easy now,” she said, losing her balance and feeling herself fall towards him, her feet leaving the floor. “Careful.”

His eyes were shut tight and he had a pained expression.

“Martha!” he said sharply, loudly, taking her by surprise. And in a voice that sounded so unlike the Doctor that it frightened her a little he said: “You’ve really got to try harder to be more obedient!” And taking hold of her wrist, he pulled her on top of him, rolled her over to his left side, and spooned her, holding her roughly against him, his right arm coiled tight around her waist.

“Oh god,” she breathed. Then he softened his grip.

“I’m frightened,” he whispered into her neck. His hand wandered down from her waist to her hip, hidden under the layers of fabric, and pulled her back against him as he ground his pelvis forward. She gasped. She could feel him through the layers of cloth, straining against her. He was hard.

“Oh god, have mercy,” she muttered, not sure if she wanted to laugh or cry. All those nights that she’s lain there, next to him or in the next room, thinking about him, wondering what it would be like to touch him, to kiss him, to feel him inside of her. She felt her pulse thudding between her legs now, growing stronger, her own desire swelling to match his. She clenched her internal muscles at the thought of it and felt a ripple of pleasure spread across her sex and up her abdomen. He was so hot behind her, even his hands warm now, his body straining against her, moaning softly, in pain or in pleasure she couldn’t tell. Oh, how she had wanted to feel him pin her, to drive his cock inside of her until she came.

But this was wrong. God, everything about it was wrong.

“Listen, um, Mr. Smith,” she said, getting ahold of herself. “I can’t stay here. I’ve got to get back to my own room. They mustn’t find me here. People will talk.”

He spun her to face him and his hand caught her wrist again, squeezing. His eyes were open and very black as he stared directly into hers. There was nothing of the Doctor in them.

“It’s for me to say where you shall go and what you shall do,” he said. “Do you understand me? Now lie still.”

And with that he spun her back around and pressed her to him even tighter, his ankle hooking over her ankle, his breath ragged in her ear, his erection large and urgent against her backside.

“Oh my god,” she said quietly. “Doctor, what have you gotten us into?”


	2. A Place To Hide

Martha lay still, the Doctor’s body pressed against her, his one human heart pounding against her back.

He continued to whimper and groan as if in a fever dream, his arms tight around her, gripping the fabric of her dress. It was so chaste in design - the high neck buttoned up to the throat, the long fitted sleeves, the two layers of white petticoats under the long dark skirt. She hadn’t bothered with the bloomers she’d found and was wearing her own knickers, a pair of bikini briefs in a stretchy black mesh with a trim of white lace. She wasn’t wearing a bra, just the camisole. She had briefly considered the cream colored corset the TARDIS had provided, but then decided against it. She’d been in too much of a hurry to bother with all those laces.

Her own heart was racing as she felt the Doctor’s hard cock nudging against her still, just underneath the curve of her bottom. God, she just needed to think. She had to resist the urge to arch her back and press into him, to turn towards him and cover his hot mouth with hers; to throw her skirts up and straddle him and have her way. But then she flushed with embarrassment at the thought. After all, he was incapacitated! He wasn’t himself, in more ways than one. What was making him cling to her like this? Was this coming from the Doctor somehow, in an unguarded moment? Or was it this so-called John Smith who liked to get frisky with the help? Was it neither of them, simply a side effect of the chameleon arch’s still-ongoing transformation? She’d have to wait and see.

She thought back to a few weeks prior, when they’d landed aboard that awful spaceship in orbit around a living sun. And that terrible being, whatever it had been, that kept possessing people and speaking through them, saying again and again “burn with me.” When it had possessed the Doctor, he’s been so terrified. He’d reached out to her in his blindness while she tried to help him, so afraid he was about to die. Her heart had broken to see him like that, so vulnerable and scared. But he had wanted her near to him then, was so afraid to let go of her hand for even a second. Was it possible this desire was really coming from him?

Remembering the terror of that day, she felt sobered out of her lust and could finally think clearly. This was not the Doctor, who, let’s face it, she was in love with. And she was supposed to be the servant of this … whoever this John Smith was. She needed to try and keep the boundaries clear.

She wriggled out of his grasp and off of the bed. He protested drunkenly, murmuring her name, but he seemed too mired down with sleep now to pursue her further. The possessive fire she’d seen burning in him had subsided. His eye were closed. He’d sleep now. She took a key from the sideboard, blew out the lamp, and locked him in.

***

Out in the cool night air, Martha felt her senses coming back to her even more. She’d slipped out of the inn’s back door, intent on making it to the TARDIS and getting some proper sleep. Plus, in the aftermath of the Doctor’s transformation, she’d completely forgotten about the video of instructions that he’d made for her while he waited for the arch to warm up. She’d been in her room then, with the intention of packing for their three months away. But seeing as she had no idea which planet, at which time, or in what climate they’d find themselves, she’d wound up just pacing around, putting her medical textbooks in and out of a rucksack while the walls of the TARDIS shook around her.

The moon was high in the sky now, illuminating long wisps of pale cloud and the early autumnal mists that had settled over the fields. She felt a little thrill of excitement. 1913! It was like living inside a BBC mini-series, with carriages and tea on silver trays. Like Upstairs Downstairs! She used to watch it with her sister and mother. Except, well, she was most certainly “downstairs” and if there were any tea trays to be had, she would be the one carrying them. Brilliant. Not to mention fending off advances from her horny, patriarchal employer. Brilliant again. Need to be more obedient, indeed! God, what was THAT about?

She reached the barn where they’d left the TARDIS and crept inside. It was pitch dark, since the usual Police Box sign was no longer lit. The ship’s interior was also dimmed, and even the usual hum had gone quiet. There was still a riot of 1913-related paraphernalia strewn across the grating, the things she hadn’t packed. Leather bound books, more clothes, a little gold telescope —- and oh no, the watch! She’s completely forgotten!

It was still there, fitted into the chameleon arch. She reached up, gave it a tug, and it popped out into her hand. It was heavy, and covered in the circular designs which she knew was the Doctor’s native language.

“Martha, this watch is me,” he’d said to her, in the middle of their frantic flight from the aliens. “Those creatures are hunters, they can sniff out anyone. And me being a Time Lord, well, I’m unique. They can track me down across the whole of time and space.”

“Ha, and the good news is?” she’d said, trying not to panic.

“They’ve smelled me, but they haven’t seen me,” the Doctor replied. “And their lifespans are running out, so we have to hide. Wait for them to die.”

“But they can track us down!” she’d protested. It was then he revealed his plan to become human. To rewrite every cell in his body.

“But if you’re gonna rewrite every cell, isn’t it gonna hurt?” she’d asked.

“Oh yeah,” he said, adjusting the settings and then looking at her, his eyes wide. “It hurts.”

All she had to do, he’d said, was open up the watch and he would return to his Time Lord self. She weighed it in her palm now. She mustn’t do it unless it was an emergency, though. Not unless those creatures had found them. If they could stay hidden, then she could open it in three months, and they’d be safe.

“It all depends on you,” he’d told her.

“Ugh, but I want to open it now!” she said to the empty console room. “I want you back! How am I bloody supposed to do this without you?”

She put the watch down carefully on the console, making a mental note not to forget it this time.

She thought of the man he’d become, this John Smith, pawing at her and igniting her desires, and she was suddenly livid. It was like the Doctor was toying with her!

She stormed back towards her room, and flung the door open. Her black leather jacket was lying on the floor, and she kicked it away angrily.

“Fuck!” she shouted. “Fucking … fuck!”

The thing is, it was already apparent that he’d been wrong on a few points, and this worried her. He’d warned her that the TARDIS wouldn’t be able to invent an identity for her, and that she’d have to improvise. But it had! The Chameleon Hatch had delivered her a whole set of clothes and identification, even travel documents. It was strange to see them: Martha Jones, British citizen, born 1884. There was even a half-finished needlepoint project in a little velvet bag and a Charles Dickens novel with her name written in the front, in her own handwriting!

She felt suddenly blazing hot, and needed to get out of this dress. She yanked off her boots and socks, and sent her cap frisbee-ing across the room. Again her fingers fumbled with the tiny buttons on her dress, up the back and along her side.

“Ugh!” she said to the dress. “Get off of me!”

She managed to free herself and pull it over her head. She unbuttoned the waistband of her petticoats and let them fall to the floor, standing at last in only her knickers. And then a wild, rebellious thought occurred to her: she’d never been alone in the TARDIS before.

Instead of searching for something to put on from among her own clothes, she turned on her heel and padded down the corridor, nearly naked, to the Doctor’s room. Even though she knew he was back at the inn and couldn’t possible discover her, she still tried her best not to make a sound.

His room was dark and quiet, and smelled faintly of whatever it was he put in his hair. The scent was subtle, like a nice cologne. She’d have felt like giggling if she weren’t so keenly aware of how alone she now was, stranded in a time that was not her own. His long brown coat was hanging from a peg, and she could see his blue suit thrown over the back of a chair along with the pale blue shirt he’d been wearing with it.

“I’m in the Doctor’s room, practically naked,” she said to herself, and then she did allow herself a giggle, feeling mischievous. She picked up the shirt, brought it to her face, and sniffed.

“Oh this is bad,” she said to herself, inhaling him. “Bad bad bad.”

She slipped the shirt on, buttoned the two middle buttons, and regarded herself in the wardrobe mirror.

“Very bad,” she said. “However …”

She smoothed her hands over her breasts and down along her waist and hips, enjoying the feel of his shirt against her naked skin. He was so tall, the shirt was long enough to cover her bottom. She thought of the way the Doctor’s body had felt against her, his hot breath against her neck, and she felt a shudder of pleasure at the thought. But no. She was ashamed of it, too. And the two sensations made for an unfamiliar mix inside of her.

“Well Doctor,” she said to her reflection. “That’s what you get for dry humping a girl, let me tell you. This shirt’s mine now.”

I could sleep in here, it occurred to her. But then in the next instant she shook the thought from her head. No, she mustn’t let things get confused. The situation was muddled enough as it was.

“What. A. Mess,” she said to her reflection.

Still dressed in just the shirt and knickers, she padded back into the quiet console room. It was strange to feel the ship dormant like this.

“Ow,” she said, the grating hurting her bare feet. She pressed a button on the little screen and climbed into the jump seat, pulled her legs up and hugged her knees to her chest.

“Ok, now,” she said to the screen.” I really hope you’ve told me what the hell I’m supposed to do with you!”

The Doctor’s face appeared, his eyes a little wild and his hair askew.

“Is this working?” his voice said, and she felt her heart jump a little. He tapped the screen. “Martha?”

“Yes it’s bloody working!” she said.

“Before I change, here’s a list of instructions for when I’m human,” he said.

“Right,” she muttered. “For when you’re a horny bastard. Go on.”

“One,” he said. “Don’t let me hurt anyone. We can’t have that, but you know what humans are like.”

“Right,” she said aloud again. “I’m thinking you’re the one who doesn’t know.”

“Two,” he said. “Don’t worry about the TARDIS. I’ll put it on emergency power so they can’t detect it. Just … let it hide away.”

“Yes, you sexy idiot,” she said. “Fine. What about you? How the hell do I deal with you?”

“Four,” he said. “No, wait a minute, three.”

She laughed. God, she missed him already.

“No getting involved in big historical events,” he went on. “Four, you. Don’t let me abandon you.”

“Ha,” she said. “Abandon me. Not likely. You were trying to climb into my dress!”

He kept on going. How she should use psychic paper to get the bank to give them money if they needed it. What to do if she lost the TARDIS key. The protocol to follow if they happened to meet other time travelers. That she should bring him back to the TARDIS if he was really injured but it was too soon to open the watch. Not to let any doctors try to operate on him for any reason. To make sure he didn’t eat any pears.

“God, you’ve got a gob,” she said affectionately, while he rambled.

“And 23. If anything goes wrong. If they find us, Martha, then you know what to do. Open the watch. Everything I am is kept safe in there. Now I’ll put a perception filter on it so the human me won’t think anything of it. He’ll think it’s just a watch.”

“Perception filter,” she scoffed. “How Harry Potter of you.”

“But don’t open it unless you have to!” he continued.

“Yes, yes I get it!”

“Because once you do, the family will be able to find me. It’s all down to you Martha. Your choice.”

And then he went as if to turn off the video.

“That’s it?!” she protested.

“Oh, and…” he said, dipping back into view. “Thank you.”

“That’s it?” she said again. “Nothing about the fever, nothing about me except not to let you abandon me? Ugh! How am I supposed to do this?”

She swung herself off the jump seat and went back to her room, determined to get a few hours of sleep before she had to return to the inn and begin their life of hiding in earnest.

But as she lay in bed she tossed and turned, sleep eluding her. Try as she might she couldn’t get the Doctor out of her head. Thank you, he’d said to her in the video. Thank you.

It was all just so jarring. They’d been running for their lives and then bang, all of a sudden there they were, adrift in the early autumn evening of a quieter world. Here was a totally alternate reality in which the Doctor was not himself. When she closed her eyes she saw the dark, feverish eyes of John Smith staring back at her. Heard the growl in his voice when he’d grabbed her wrist and told her to obey him. Felt the sense memory of his lips on her skin, grazing her neck.

When she finally did fall asleep, her dreams were all confusion and darkness, as a strange man whispered commands in her ear using the Doctor’s voice. She felt herself being pressed up against something, a dresser maybe, her legs spread. The man with the Doctor’s voice was behind her, holding her arms back, caressing her, speaking close to her ear. She was wearing her restrictive 1913 dress and there was another man under her skirts, a man whose every touch scalded. Kissing her thighs, his rough tongue dragged along her skin and moved ever closer to her wet center. She couldn’t see who he was, and this both frightened and excited her. His hands gripped her hips under her skirts and his tongue found her wet folds, lapping her in a rhythm that felt impossibly, deliciously slow. When she awoke, to the sound of the alarm she’d set, her pulse was racing, the climax that she’d felt on the verge of already receding back under the waves of sleep.


	3. Martha and Mr. Smith

Martha bolted from her bed. The alarm had awoken her, as she intended, but the timeless ambiance of the TARDIS around her gave her a feeling of panic, like maybe she’d slept too long. The usual hum was silent as it had been the night before, but still she worried. What if it had somehow … I don’t know … drifted in the night, to another place or time, leaving the Doctor alone and unprotected, in a time that would, by the next year, fall headlong into the First World War?

The Doctor. He’d trusted her, he’d depended on her, and she couldn’t let him down.

She hurried into the console room where she’d left the fob watch, picked it up, and held it against her chest. The metal was cool, like any normal object.

“I’ve got you,” she said. “Don’t worry.”

Wrapping a coat around her from the Chameleon Hatch and sliding her feet into a pair of slippers, she crept out of the TARDIS doors, through the barn, and peered out at the little country lane.

It was brisk, but not as cold as the night before. The light was clear and buttery golden, the sky pink around the edges, still early. Good.

So it had been a bit of a rough start for this John Smith and his faithful servant Martha, but so what. He was still in the process of changing, of rewriting every cell of his biology, he’d said. There was bound to be an adjustment period. Oh, but what she wouldn’t give to learn about Time Lord medical advances, she thought.

No, she was going to do things right this time. Here was a man who always managed to save her, even when rescue seemed without hope. Especially then, in fact. He could do anything. And she wasn’t about to let him down now. If this John Smith was a bit of a tricky bloke, then so be it. She’d dealt with tricky blokes before. All she needed to do was keep him safe for three months, and then the Doctor would return to her. She wasn’t going to mess this up. No, she’d do it right.

“Don’t let me hurt anyone,” he’d said, his number one concern.

She ran back inside and gathered up more of the women’s clothes provided by the Chameleon Hatch. It was strange, the more things she pulled out of the old-style steamer trunk, the more there still seemed to be. Shirts for John Smith, black academic robes, waistcoats, more dresses for her and petticoats, petticoats, petticoats. It seemed to go on and on.

God, she thought, sorting through the array of plain but well-made frocks in gray and taupe, black and navy. I’m a servant. I wouldn’t have all of these!

She gathered up an armload of clothing and took it back to her room. She took off the Doctor’s shirt she’d slept in and tucked it guiltily under her pillow. That had been a bad idea. Pervy of her, to take liberties like that without him knowing. But what can you do?

“Don’t you bloody judge me,” she said aloud to the silent TARDIS.

Stepping out of her knickers and into the hot shower, she rinsed away the sweat of fear and desire from the night before, the lingering scent of the Doctor that clung to her skin and hair. She was so slick between her legs, the tender flower of her body swollen with unfulfilled wanting, but she didn’t have time for that now.

She dried off, and began the task of dressing herself properly. First, the knee length bloomers and lace-edged camisole. Both white. She admired her reflection, liking the way they looked against her smooth, caramel skin. Then came the corset. It was plain, with boning in the same cream as the fabric. It fanned out to cover her hips and the scalloped top cupped her breasts perfectly. Not too tight. Good. This one laced up the front: a working woman’s undergarment. Also good. No ladies’ maid for her. Then came the petticoats, one thin and gauzy for next to the body, the other starchier and more sturdy, with a thick bottom ruff. Then came the dress, in a gray-blue calico, then black knee-high stockings, and then the black ankle boots. She smoothed her wet hair back and secured it in a tight bun.

There was another little suitcase provided by the Chameleon Hatch, and she began packing the rest of their things into it. She had a theory, and she was right: the more she put in, the more seemed to fit, and when she snapped it shut and lifted it up, it was as light as if it were empty. Time Lord technology. It was bigger on the inside.

She put the fob watch in her coat pocket, locked the TARDIS, tucked the key into her dress, and set off down the road back to the inn.

***

When she came through the servants entrance, she was alarmed to see that the kitchen was occupied already. A portly woman with graying red hair was at work at the stove, with mousy Sarah hovering at her side. A man in his twenties sat at the end of the table, polishing a pair of men’s brown oxfords, and the ladies’ maid, Anna, sat across from him, languidly stirring a cup of tea. She eyed Martha suspiciously, knowingly.

“Hi, hi there, hello,” Martha said to them all awkwardly. “Just ah, up a bit early! Early bird, that’s me. Catching the worm, that kind of thing! So much to do. So much … um, serving. You know how it is.”

God but she was rubbish at this. Sarah managed a weak smile.

“I’ll just, um …. yeah,” she said, escaping up the stairs. Up to the servant’s quarters she went, rummaged through her suitcase and found a white apron, which she tied on over her dress. She took the key to the Doctor’s room, to Mr. Smith’s room, and went downstairs to let him out.

But when she put her hand on the knob, the latch clicked and the door opened. It hadn’t been locked! Oh no oh no oh no! Oh shit oh shit oh shit. She shouldn’t have left him alone like that!

“Mr. Smith?” she called, peering inside. “Are you there?”

The bed was empty, the sheets and blankets all kicked off and the pillows strewn about. The curtains were opened and the morning light streamed in.

“Mr. Smith?”

The bathroom door was open, and she looked in. There was steam on the mirror, and shaving implements on the side of the sink. The striped pajamas were strewn unceremoniously across the tile floor.

“Oh my god,” she muttered, realizing he must have dressed himself, or tried to. “Where have you got to?”

She imagined him out wandering the fields in his addled state, trying to sonic cows using a twig or something. Or that stupid pen. What a mess! She had to find him!

“You’re gonna owe me big time, Doctor,” she muttered as she hurried down the stairs towards the inn’s front entrance. She hoped he hadn’t gotten so far that she couldn’t find him. What a bloody mess! How could they expect to function if she had to keep an eye on him every second? Chameleon arch indeed!

She was striding towards the door when suddenly she heard a voice call to her.

“Martha? Martha! Martha where are you going?”

She froze. Could it be? She peered around the door frame of the inn’s dining room, where a few small tables were made up for breakfast. There was an elderly woman, Anna’s employer, and her middle aged son at one. A pair of men in hunting gear sat at another. And at a table against the far wall, near the big picture window, stood the Doctor, an open newspaper in his hand. He motioned for her to approach him, then sat back down and resumed reading.

She edged her way towards the table cautiously.

“Morning Martha,” he said to her without looking up from his paper. She noticed that the men in hunting gear were staring at her.

“Good … morning, sir,” she said. “Mr. Smith.”

He was dressed in a gray wool suit with a neat black tie, his hair parted on the side and combed down smoothly. He was wearing glasses, but a different pair. Wire-rimmed and rounder.

“I trust you’ve rested well from the journey?” he said, turning the page.

“Yes sir, very well sir,” she said. “Um, thanks.”

“Good. Now if you could ready my things, I ought to get going to meet the headmaster as soon as I finish here. As you know, I promised my poor uncle that I would ask after a post for you. It’s the least I can do for him, God rest his soul.”

“Right sir, ah … thank you. Sir.”

“Yes well, we’ll see,” he said, smiling blandly at her. His eyes met hers and she was surprised to see something in them that was darker than the smile. It was like they carried a trace of the fever from last night, but in the next second, it was gone. He reached across the table to butter a second piece of toast.

“For me, this interview is really just a formality,” he said. “And I expect I shall commence my duties straight away. If I can’t get anything for you, then don’t you worry. I’ll arrange for your ticket back to London. It’s no trouble at all.”

He sounded cheerful enough, but also as if he was barely interested in what he said. He took a sip of tea and went back to reading.

She was speechless, staring at him.

“Well then, get a move on,” he said looking up at her once more, shooing her. “Can’t have me turning up late on the very first day.”

“Oh course not sir,” she said. “Right away, sir.”

“There we are now. Spit spot. Off you go.”

How very strange, John Smith thought as he watched her retreat. This dark woman. It was like there was something important about her that he’d forgotten. Something that had slipped his mind which he needed to do or say. He sighed. Ah well. No matter. It would come to him. Another cup of tea was what he needed to clear his head, that’s all. He’d been unwell. Yes, that was it. A fever. And his sleep had been troubled by disorienting dreams.

John Smith had been dreaming of starlight. No, of stars. They were cold and beautiful at first, the only things he could see in a vast darkness that surrounded him on all sides. It was as if he stood on the surface of a black and frozen lake, so that if he looked up into the dome overhead he could see them stretching above him into forever, and if he looked down there was the same view, bottomless. The stars were relentlessly infinite, as dust motes in a sunbeam, drifting, always more. They were close enough to touch, and yet so far away that he could never reach them. They were both of these things, near and far at once.

“Very very near and very very far are the exact same things,” a voice said to him in his dream. His own voice. Or almost his own voice.

“Oh yes. Once something is far away enough, well, it goes ‘round the other side so that it’s close again. It’s quite simple really. You know this,” the voice said.

Yes, of course he did, he thought, with the logic of dreams. And he felt the nearness of the most distant galaxies, hovering just behind him, so close they were inside him, they *were* him, fueling his sight and hearing and tinging the taste on the back of his tongue with their cool metal.

He had a sense of motion, as on a fast moving train that was hurtling through this long darkness of endless starlight, as though through a tunnel. It was like sliding along the surface of this black lake reflecting the cosmos above and below him, but now the surface was curving under him and the tunnel was curving before him, and he knew he was barreling towards something, but he couldn’t see what. His feet were on solid ground, and yet he was falling. And without noticing it was happening, the ice beneath him was softening into water, into an ocean that roiled around and over him. He was already under the black waves which pulled and rocked and crescendoed. And the waves were full of stars, gleaming like plankton, tiny, a seeding of hot sparks. But some stars grew larger as they floated towards him, and he felt a primal fear of them, like they were shipwrecks pushed up from the sea bottom, containing who knew what horrors, growing every closer, ever larger, bearing somehow in their brightness a dark terror of the unknown. And he didn’t want to let them touch him for he knew that the stars would enter him then, would become him and consume him, would burn him and obliterate him.

And then he had awoken. Morning. Sunlight. Birdsong outside and the faint smell of sausages frying. He’d wound himself around the blankets, damp from his perspiration, his morning erection present and accounted for, but harmless. Not urgent. Just like any other morning.

An appointment! he’d thought as he adjusted himself, his stiffness already subsiding. I have a very important appointment today. He’d gotten up and began to dress for breakfast, as the last traces of the dream slipped from his mind silkily and were gone.

Yes, he thought, as he finished his tea. He’d been dreaming strange things. It was something to do with this Martha. If only he could remember what. He felt a stirring in his cock at the thought of her, but quickly tamped the feeling down. He relaxed, and cleared his throat. It wasn’t like he desired her or anything, a poor serving girl. What a ridiculous thought.


	4. Getting Into Trouble

Martha threw the scrubbing brush against the tiles with a loud clatter. There was no way, NO way, that she was going to do the floor again, no matter what the Matron said. They were just being hard on her on purpose. Smith had begun work at the school almost right away, and had had no trouble securing her a position as a house maid. At first she was glad, but she regretted it now. Despite the back story that the TARDIS had invented for them, couldn’t she have changed it around in some way, to something a little more dignified? It had been weeks of this now, the non-stop dusting and mopping and straightening, not to mention the never ending onslaught of laundry from these filthy, filthy boys.

How did they manage it? Those boys were in each other’s company at all hours of the day and night. No privacy at all. And still, if she saw just one more soiled pillowcase, so obviously stiff with … with …

It revolted her. She’d never thought before of how terribly disgusting teenage boys could be, but now she practically loathed them. Randy, entitled little fucks. Not all of them were this way, of course. Some of them were sweet, but the bad ones were bad enough to spoil the whole bunch. Cruel to each other, cruel to the staff, and worst of all to her. They commented on her skin color, asking if she’d spilled coffee on herself. They knocked over her cleaning supplies and tore down her washing. One of the older boys had even pretended to stumble into her in the hall the other day, his hands gripping her hips to steady himself, leaning against her lecherously.

“Sorry Jones, how clumsy of me,” he’d said with a smirk.

Snot-nosed little twat.

She sank to the floor and let her legs splay out inelegantly in front of her. It was after dinner, and her primary duties should be done by now. She was tired and wanted to sleep.

Oh why, why?! she thought. See the stars, he says to me. Indeed. He’ll be seeing stars when I’m done with him.

She would quit, and spend the next two and a half months killing time in the TARDIS if it weren’t for the fact that “Mr. Smith” had started telling her about his dreams. She was bringing in his breakfast tray one morning when all of a sudden he’d very innocently said to her, “Do you know, Martha? I had the strangest dream. I dreamed I was this sort of … adventurer. A doctor or something, sailing through the stars. Can you imagine?”

She stared at him, wondering if he’d gone ahead and opened the watch and was having a laugh at her expense.

“Really,” she’d said flatly, unamused. “How … extraordinary.”

“Yes, isn’t it just?” he’d said, oblivious. “I had a kind of blue box, sort of like a flying carpet or something, and it would take me anywhere that I wished to go.”

“Well now that’s silly,” he told him, alarm rising in her. “That’s impossible.”

“Of course, but still …” he said. He picked up the fob watch from its usual resting place on the mantel, turned it over in his hand, and then set it down again.

This had worried her, and so she decided she needed to stay close, and remain at the school to keep an eye on him. Were these dreams the result of an impatient Time Lord, trying to get out before it was safe? She needed to make sure that didn’t happen, but it wasn’t going to be easy.

“Martha?”

A girl’s round face poked around the edge of the kitchen door. It was Jenny. Sweet, kind Jenny, come to comfort her.

“There there, what’s happened? What is it?” She knelt at Martha’s side.

“It’s Matron. Saying I’ve got to do this floor all over again. But I only just finished! Is it my fault that the boys came traipsing through here straight from the fields?”

“You’re finding all this quite hard, aren’t you?” Jenny asked. “I don’t mean to pry, but were you not doing much housework in your last position, back in London, with Mr. Smith’s family?”

“Um, something like that,” Martha replied. “It was just … different.”

“They must have been nice then,” she said. “Listen. It isn’t fair, the amount they’re giving you to do. Why don’t you let me finish up here. He’s asking after you.”

“Who is?”

“Mr. Smith of course,” Jenny trilled, teasingly. “Your admirer! Sent me to get you.” Martha tried not to show any emotion. People had talked when she was hired, of course. Brought on board at the request of the new male teacher, and a young and handsome one at that. But then he’d mostly ignored her in the following weeks, barely acknowledging her except for when she brought him his breakfast in the mornings. And even then he was soon more occupied by his morning paper than her. To think she’d been so worried that night in the inn when he’d accosted her in his fever! Wishful thinking, more like. It was only when Jenny asked her more about him, at night in their shared room, that Martha had been unable to keep from blushing.

“Look at you! You’re sweet on him, you are!” Jennie had said, throwing a pillow at her.

“I’m not, no. I’m really, really not,” Martha said, trying hard not to smile, and failing. But of course it wasn’t Mr. Smith whom she was sweet on.

“Come on,” Jenny said to her now, taking her hands and pulling her up off of the tiles. “Why don’t you go and see what it is he wants.”

***

She approached the door to Mr. Smith’s rooms and rapped lightly with her knuckles.

“Come!” she heard him call from inside. She entered.

He was scowling over a pile of papers on his desk, his jacket off and his shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbows. The room was dimly lit by his desk lamp, and the steady fire in the hearth sent patterns of light crackling over the shining leather of the chesterfield. There was something distinctly Doctor-ish in the way that his hair had gone slightly askew. Her stomach did a little flip.

“Mr. Smith?” she ventured. “Jenny said you wanted me. I mean, that you needed me. I mean, that you —- um, anyway I’m here. Can I get you something?”

He looked up at her and frowned, squinting as if it was taking him a second to remember who she was.

“Oh yes. Right. Martha. Of course. Do come in.”

She closed the door behind her and approached his desk. He regarded her coldly, dispassionately, his expression unreadable.

“Sir?” she said.

“Yes,” he replied, thoughtfully, his gaze dropping for an instant to sweep over her maid’s dress before rising to meet her face again. “Well I’m afraid there’s been another complaint about you, Martha.”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“Yes, well. We can’t have any more of this. Is the job too hard for you?”

“No, sir.” She shook her head.

“Because I dare say it was rather … unusual of me to arrive at this post with recommendations for the cleaning staff, don’t you think?”

He stared off to the side for a moment, seeming to contemplate this.

“But my uncle. He passed away and I, I promised him that I’d secure you a position. Hmm. Now isn’t that odd?”

It sounded like something he’d memorized, like he was saying it to convince himself more than anyone else.

“Sir, I am sorry,” she said, and for some reason she was suddenly aware of the tightness of her corset. She wanted to get back to her room and take it off. “It was kind of you to help sir. I’ll try harder from now on.”

He looked at her again, his brows furrowed.

“Yes … yes. Indeed. Well the thing is, the impression you’ve given is that you seem to find the work to be beneath you. Subsequently, the headmaster has requested that I make sure you know your place.”

“My … place, sir?”

“Disciplinary action is absolutely in the best interest of the wayward,” he droned, sounding bored. “It is only through humility that we can learn respect, and thus ennoble ourselves. Eh hem. Now hold out your hand please.”

He stood, and took a rattan cane from where it was resting against the desk. Oh god, he wasn’t actually going to hit her. She wasn’t sure she could stand that. Then she thought of that first night, when he’d told her to obey him and a part of her had … liked it. The part of her that wanted to be his. She thought guiltily of how she had then taken his shirt and slept in it. A transgression. In his instruction video, the Doctor had told her not to let him hurt anyone, but maybe she deserved it, she thought. She didn’t move. He was turning the cane over in his hands.

“No, but then again I don’t want to interfere with your work,” he was saying, seemingly to himself. “Not the hands. That won’t do to solve things at all. No. Well, if it’s good enough for the boys then it’s good enough for you.”

“No!” Martha said, realizing what he was about to do. That seemed to make him angry.

“What do you mean, no?” He took her arm, his grip surprisingly tight, and steered her towards his desk. “The headmaster was right. You need to be taken in hand.”

She looked up into his face. He couldn’t really mean to cane her, could he? He colored slightly, avoiding her eyes.

“Right,” he said. “Six of the best, and then you can be on your way, lesson learned.”

“Sir,” she said, also blushing. It was very hard not to feel as if it was the Doctor doing this. Except of course that it wasn’t. It isn’t him, she told herself, keenly aware of how near he was, of the rise and fall of his chest as his breathing grew more laboured, the heat of his body and the smell of him, of wool and pipe smoke, his long fingers gripping her through the sleeve of her dress. It isn’t him.

“Now Martha, this is for your own good. Kindly place your hands on the desk.” His voice was calm, but irrefutable.

The blood was roaring in her ears now, but she did as she was told. She placed her hands down amongst the papers. Smith stood beside her, positioning himself, seeming to hesitate.

“No,” he said. “Like this.”

He put the cane aside and grabbed her by the hips, forcing her down against the wood. She could feel him standing behind her now, breathing audibly. His thumbs rested at the point where the hardness of her corset ended and the swell of her flesh began, feeling along the ridge. He swallowed.

“I’m going to lift your skirt now,” he said. “Better do it properly. No half measures.”

This wasn’t done. Not to grown women. Not like this. She knew that. He must know it, too.

He reached down and gathered her skirt and petticoats, pushing them up and over her waist to reveal the curve of her rump under her white, knee-length drawers.

“Right,” he said. “Try to remain still, and don’t make a sound.”

He brought the cane down hard against her soft flesh with a resounding “thwack!”

“Ah!” she cried out. She couldn’t help herself. She was shocked by how much it stung. Her head rang with the pain of it.

“Martha please,” John Smith said calmly but forcefully behind her, chastising her, sounding very much like the Doctor indeed.

“Sorry,” she said.

“Not at all.”

Thwack!

The second stroke landed just as hard, but hurt a little less. Still, her eyes swam with tears, and she swallowed to avoid crying out. He passed his free hand over her backside, as if to smooth the fabric of her drawers in preparation for the next stroke. His touch felt electric on her skin through the thin cotton, and sent a jolt right to her clit. She was wet now.

Stop it, she thought to herself. Stop it. It’s not him.

Thwack!

The third stroke almost didn’t hurt at all, and the fourth was more pleasure than pain, causing the inner walls of her cunt to vibrate. Fuck, what was going on? Smith was breathing hard now, and she wondered what he saw, wondered if he knew what he was doing to her. The fifth stroke came down the hardest, driving her against the desk. He passed his hand over the curve of her arse again, and she gasped.

Lower, she thought. Touch me. Please. I don’t care who you are.

“Almost finished,” she heard the Doctor’s voice say and she thought, I could come like this.

He administered the sixth and final stroke and she couldn’t suppress a slight moan. Her whole body was trembling. She heard Smith clear his throat and put the cane away.

“Martha, please collect yourself,” he said

She eased up and off of the desk, turning to face him, her skirts falling back down. She was so confused. She looked into his face and saw that he was flushed, his eyes very dark. She had a feeling that if she looked down at his body that his own desire would betray itself. But she didn’t dare. Instead she let her gaze fall to the floor.

Fuck, she thought. He knew. But did the Doctor know? Was he watching this? Would he remember?

“You may return to your duties now,” Smith said. “Have you learned your lesson?”

Martha nodded, unable to speak or get a handle on what had happened.

“Very good then. You are dismissed.”

***

John Smith watched the maid shut the door behind her and then collapsed into his chair, hating himself.

His cock was painfully engorged and his temples were pounding. He’d taken advantage. He knew that. He’d taken advantage and it hadn’t even been his intention. What had come over him? He’d only meant to control her, but then seeing her standing there he’d felt such a strange longing. And he couldn’t have that. It wasn’t right. Yet there was something like affection and sadness in what he felt for her, that reminded him of the strange dreams he’d been having. Those dreams that were full of excitement and terror.

It was wrong what he did, he thought, unbuttoning his trousers and feeling himself spring free. Wrong. He took his hard and throbbing flesh in his fist, imagining the way she’d looked just now, sprawled across his desk like that, her voice as she’d cried out, the way she had shivered under his touch. Oh yes, yes, very wrong, he thought, as he pumped up and down, forceful as he had been with her. Merciless. Brutal. Wrong. Yes. Oh god, yes.


	5. A Pressing Need

Martha hurried down the hall and away from Smith’s door, her whole body ringing like an alarm. What was happening? She couldn’t quite catch her breath and her hands and feet had almost no feeling in them. She was nearly an MD and knew the symptoms clear as day: she was going to faint.

How utterly, utterly ridiculous.

She needed air.

She felt herself moving down the stairs, almost like floating, her vision darkening around the edges. Because the thing was, she wanted to go back. She wanted the Doctor, she needed the Doctor, but if he wasn’t here, then damn it - maybe Smith would do. Besides, he’d give her something that the Doctor couldn’t.

Except, he was like a lake that she couldn’t see the bottom of, and who knew what lay hidden in those depths. It was as if she needed him to protect her, but from himself. It didn’t make any sense but did it need to? She didn’t love him. Maybe that didn’t matter. But she couldn’t — She couldn’t! I mean, what would the Doctor say? God, if only she could breathe!

She burst through a back door and out into the little walled yard where they hung most of the washing. Or at least they had until recently. It was getting colder now, with the first frosts of early October. She sank down on the step, gulping at the night air, her breath misting out in front of her. It wasn’t enough. She wrenched off her apron straps and tore at the buttons of her dress at her throat, her fingers slipping, buttons popping, tearing it open to her waist so she could reach the corset. She heard the fabric rip but didn’t care. She felt panicked.

“I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe!” she said, tears springing to her eyes. She untied the top bow of her corset cover, finally reaching the stays so that she could snap the front open, one two three, her ribcage expanding in gratitude. She felt the oxygen begin to pour into her blood stream, and she put her head between her knees, remaining there while her system calmed.

 

“Martha, is that you? Are you alright?”

It was Latimer, a sixth former, one of the sweet ones. He was standing in the doorway. She put her head up and clutched her torn dress to her, hunching away from the open door and into the shadows.

“Oh Tim, don’t worry. Run along. I’m just fine.”

“No … you aren’t,” he said, stepping out into the courtyard. There was concern written over his pale, elfin features. He looked young for his age. “I’m sorry, I was just passing through. There was a book I left, out on the lawn and well Rocastle said I could — oh. Oh I’m sorry.”

He stood quietly for a moment.

“I’ll fetch Jenny,” he said.

“No, it’s —” Martha protested, but he’d already gone. Fuck. She stood up and tried to snap the front clasps of her corset closed, but she could only manage the first two while it was still laced tightly in back. She smoothed her hair down, straightening her lace hair piece, and tried to pull the front pieces of her dress together enough to cover the white of her undergarments. She heard clattering footsteps.

“Martha? Martha, oh my god!”

Jenny rushed out to her, her face scanning the upper windows to see if anyone could see them, and then pushed her back under the shadowed eaves of the house.

“Shh, keep quite, we can’t have anyone hear us,” she said. “Latimer said you’d been attacked or something.”

Martha sniffed. Jenny took in her crying face, her torn clothes, and her eyes widened to saucers.

“Oh my god, oh my GOD! It wasn’t —! Mr. Smith, he didn’t! I mean he couldn’t have!”

“No, Martha corrected her quickly. “No no, nothing like that.”

Jenny was staring at her torn dress.

“I did this. It wasn’t him. I was going to faint,” she tried to explain.

“But what happened? You went to see Mr. Smith didn’t you? Oh my god, but let’s get you inside.” And with that Jenny hurried her into the house and away to the servant’s quarters.

Once she’d shut the door to their room, Jenny rounded on Martha.

“Alright enough of this, what’s he done? Look at the state of you!”

This was the thing about her life now: no bloody privacy.

“It’s fine, Jenny. Really.”

“Well of course it isn’t! What do you mean, you couldn’t breathe? Do you want to go and see Nurse Redfern? Of course, let’s get you cleaned up first but, but, maybe not, I mean if he, I mean then we couldn’t, and I mean no one must know, but that doesn’t mean we can’t —-“

“Jenny,” Martha cut her off. “Stop gabbling. No, I haven’t been … you know. And I’m not hurt.” But she was. “I … I just thought … Mr. Smith said … the headmaster. The headmaster wants to sack me. But he isn’t going to. Not yet anyway. He just wanted Mr. Smith to … to … discipline me.”

Jenny cracked a smile then.

“Aw, love, well that’s not so bad, is it? I mean pardon me for saying it, but you’re not exactly the favorite around here!”

She chuckled, and Martha found herself smiling too.

“No,” she laughed. “I’m really not.”

“But I like you! I think you’re lovely!” Jenny said. “I think it’s exciting, having you here. You and your London ways! Suffragettes and the rest. Very modern. I reckon you’re the future, you are, and a better one at that.”

Martha couldn’t help but laugh.

“Yes,” she said. “You could say that I am indeed very modern. Futuristic, even.”

They were both laughing, but of course for different reasons.

Jenny was helping her out of her torn frock now, undressing her like she was a child.

“You’ve had a bit of a scare, that’s all,” she said comfortingly, putting a shawl around Martha’s shoulders. “School teachers. They can be very stern. It’s no wonder you’ve had a bit of a fright!”

I can trust her, Martha thought, as the other girl fussed around her. We’re in this together in a way, her and me. Two young women at the bottom of the food chain with no one to help us.

“What, did he make you do lines then?” Jenny was giggling. “I, Martha Jones, will not talk back, one hundred times on the chalkboard?”

She thought of herself flung over his desk, his papers crinkling under her and her hands gripping the edge, her skirts up, his cane poised in the air, ready to strike. The smile drained from her face.

“What is it,” Jenny said, serious again.

“He … caned me.”

Jenny grabbed her hands, looked at them, saw the lack of welts, and then looked at her face, realizing.

“What, on the rump? Like a naughty student? He didn’t!”

“Yes he did,” Martha said, and for some reason the whole situation, the Doctor, John Smith, this “family” of alien hunters, time travel, the look of utter scandal on Jenny’s face, was all utterly and completely hilarious. They both started to laugh uncontrollably, tears leaking from their eyes.

“Poor soul,” Jenny cackled. “Must have been the thrill of his poor life!” And they laughed even harder, trying to stifle the sound, fanning themselves.

Martha wheezed with mirth. She wasn’t sure it was that funny, but she needed the release. She’d been working too hard and worrying to much, and it had been too long since she felt properly close to someone. They got into their twin beds and turned out the lamp.

Finally they quieted.

“Are you sore then?” Jenny asked, some genuine concern entering her voice again.

The thing was, she wasn’t really. The flesh of her backside burned a little, in three distinct horizontal lines where he’d struck her, but it wasn’t too bad.

“I’m okay. Goodnight.”

“‘Night.”

She ran a hand over her rear in the dark. It had all been a little bit of a blur of sensation at the time, but now she could feel exactly where he’d hit her. Three marks on each cheek running perfectly parallel. Caning was supposed to be terrible. She’d read about it. So maybe he hadn’t hit her very hard, after all. These marks were controlled, precise: he knew what he was doing.

The Doctor would never want to hurt me, she thought, as she drifted off to sleep, missing him.

***

It was rather odd to be John Smith. In many ways he was a brilliant man, with an absolutely encyclopedic knowledge of European history from the time of Plato onward. Anything there was to know about it that could be known by a British man in 1913, he knew. He would cheerfully volunteer these tidbits during staff meetings or at supper, and his colleagues would sometimes remark upon it.

“I say old chap, but when it comes to memorizing facts you really are remarkable,” they’d say.

“Am I? Hmmm,” he’s reply blandly, returning his attention to his plate. “I suppose so.”

Because the thing was, it wasn’t like he tried very hard to remember these things, he just sort of … did. The Punic Wars, the Welsh Uprising of 1211, the reign of Frankish king Childebert the First, Pope Innocent X’s objections to the Peace of Westfalia. He was especially partial to military history. But I mean come now, didn’t everyone know these things?

Of course, the other end of the joke, as it were, was that colleagues observed Mr. Smith to have little room in his brain for anything else. It wasn’t that they didn’t respect him. They did. He was good with the boys. Firm. But he was quickly gaining a reputation as something of a woolgatherer.

He was as yet unmarried, with no remaining family to speak of. He certainly didn’t speak of them. He was always polite, but the truth was that he didn’t like to be asked personal things. It made him feel somewhat … unsettled afterwards.

After abusing himself upon Martha’s departure from his rooms, he’d tried very hard to put the whole thing from his mind. His release had been hard, sudden, and had left him gasping and lightheaded. But as he’d tidied himself after, he tried to shrug off the terrible guilt that had come rushing in in its wake. He’d been asked to discipline her, and he did. That was all. It was his duty. If it had become a little confused in the process, well, that was neither here nor there. It wasn’t her place to have an opinion on the means by which he chose to reform her.

But then when he went to sleep, lying in his little bed that was built into the wood paneling of his main room, the fire almost burned out, his dreams were troubled. He was running, always running. Away or towards something, he couldn’t really tell. But it was urgent, more urgent than anything he could imagine. He felt a strange pounding in his chest, more like hoof beats than a regular heart. Rat-tat-tat-tat. Rat-tat-tat-tat. Galloping. There was a fire inside of him, burning him up like the inside of a volcano, and he was filled with a terrible rage, a rage that could destroy whole worlds. He felt powerful and terribly, terribly alone. Except … except Martha was there. But no. It shouldn’t have been Martha. Not her. It should have been … someone else. Still, there she was, always her, her face above him, beside him, running with him, lying next to him, on top of him and her mouth on his, breathing air into his lungs. He loved her and he didn’t love her. He was angry at her and he needed her, needed her desperately. Then the dream changed and he thought of her beautiful skin, her wide eyes, her dark limbs wrapped around him. There was a strange green light around them and a place with golden walls, a place that hummed the way his body hummed when he touched her. Yes, this is what he wanted, he thought, straining into her, the dream version of her that was open before him and was absolutely his.

Don’t, another voice seemed to say to him. His own and not his own. Don’t do it. Not her. Please, we can’t have that.

But he pushed it aside. Who was this voice to tell him what to do? He was powerful. He had galaxies inside of him.

No, the voice said. You can’t.

But I can, he answered back. Oh but I can.

It was only this last part of the dream that stayed with him upon waking, the feeling of Martha’s pliant body under and around him. He’d been obliged to sort himself out once more.

You mustn’t lose control, he berated himself when it was done and he went to dress in preparation for his breakfast. Besides, she’ll be here soon with the tray.

This really won’t do, he thought to his reflection as he shaved. A man his age. He ought to be married. If only he could think of someone suitable.

He was a picture of perfect composure when he heard the knock at his door. But when he said “come” and the door opened, it was Jenny who carried his tray.

“Good morning sir,” she said. “I trust you slept well.” Her face betrayed nothing.

“Oh good morning Jenny,” he said, surprised. “Right.”

“Martha’s had to run an errand for the Matron this morning,” Jenny said. “And I’m covering her duties. Can I bring you anything else?”

“No,” he said, frowning at his breakfast. “No no. This is quite sufficient.”

“Sir,” she said, setting it down, and was gone.


	6. Rule Number One

When Martha woke up the next morning she was very sore indeed. Jenny insisted on doing the first part of her morning chores for her, and she gratefully accepted, promising to make it up to her in the afternoon. She wasn’t sure how she was going to face dear Mr. Smith just yet.

She couldn’t believe it hadn’t hurt more while it was happening. But as soon as he’d moved close to her, taken her arm, as soon as she’d felt the heat rising off of him, so unlike the Doctor and yet, of course, looking just like him, her nervous system had gone haywire. Jumbled hair - Doctor. Dark eyes - not quite. Lips? Doctor, definitely. The smell of him? Definitely not.

She knew the technicalities, the science: faced with both intense sexual attraction and the fight or flight response, her suprarenal glands had dumped bucketloads of adrenaline, endorphins and enkephalins into her bloodstream, acting as a natural opiate-like pain suppressant. Essentially, she’d been high.

She’d read about this. The out of body experience. How giddy she was with Jenny. How she then slept like the dead and woke up absolutely exhausted. An adrenal crash.

It really wasn’t fair. For starters, the Doctor was definitely her cup of tea. She loved him. Very much. She’d give nearly anything for him to see her in that way, or even just to have him back by her side, as they were. She couldn’t imagine the Doctor behaving the way Smith had, but still … she liked it. Liked his authority. Particularly liked his authority over HER.

This was something of a revelation.

Just thinking about what had happened sent a little surge of these chemicals fizzing through her again. It wasn’t really like arousal, although there was that, too. She just … wanted more of it. It wasn’t like she was meaning to take advantage of the Doctor now that he was stuck not knowing who he was, and quite possibly - it really did appear - with something that might resemble a standard male libido. As filtered through a repressed late Edwardian bachelor school teacher. With training in how to cane people. Who might actually not be so standard in that department after all. Who might in fact be a little bit … twisted?

Unless this had something to do with … what? Colonialism? Entitlement? Her current subaltern status in British society? I mean the caning was one thing, but then the way he’d touched her, taking his time with it, breathing hard. She was in his employ, dependent on him for her position and livelihood as far as he knew, so totally vulnerable.

It wasn’t nothing. She saw how it affected him. Saw him see how it affected her.

She hadn’t meant to do it. He’d made her do it.

Made her.

Oh god.

Just so long as it ends here and doesn’t go any further, she told herself.

Like lots of people she’d played with these kinds of things before. I mean, who hasn’t, at one point or another, asked their boyfriend to tie them to the bedpost, or gone in for a little light spanking? No? Well, she had. Her last serious boyfriend, Ian, had been partial to giving her a light slap on the arse when things got heated. But this thing with Smith, whatever it was, had been utterly, utterly different.

With him it had been real.

Once she was alone in the room, she touched herself, lying on her stomach and thinking about the way he strode about campus in his teacher’s cap and cape, the way his hands had felt on her hips and the tenor of his voice when he said to her: “No, like this.” Pressing her down. Like this, like this, she thought, hearing him in her mind, and came very, very quickly.

She got up, dressed, and biked to the TARDIS, seeking relief for her now throbbing backside in the medical bay. She found a jar of a pale green jelly that smelled a little like aloe and a little like marigolds, though she guessed it contained neither. It said only “topical - use on stuff” in the Doctor’s handwriting. Then she noticed another word etched onto the lid. It had looked like a random design at first but now that TARDIS was translating it, slower to work in its dormant state. The word was “chula.” It meant nothing to her. She didn’t have much time before she was needed back. Hoping it wasn’t going to turn her into a lizard or something, she took it back to her room and hoisting her skirts up, applying it to the six red lines. It felt very cold, and glittered slightly once she rubbed it on.

“Bloody hell,” she said, inspecting the marks in the mirror, which were already starting to vanish. “Six of the best indeed.” When she checked herself a few minutes later, the lines had totally faded. She felt a little bereft to see them go.

Then she went and turned on the video. She had to go but … she couldn’t help it. She wasn’t sure why she did this but she did it every time. She’d already heard it and there definitely wasn’t anything on there about how to deal with a kinky, cane wielding Doctor. Seeing him come onto the screen again made her stomach twist, making the contrast between Smith and himself even more apparent.

“Is this working?” his image asked her. “Martha?”

“Better than you can imagine,” she breathed.

“Before I change, here’s a list of instructions for when I’m human,” he continued. “One, don’t let me hurt anyone.”

Blimey, had he known?

It was all the same. Don’t let him abandon her. Don’t change history. No pears.

“If anything goes wrong. If they find us, Martha, then you know what to do. Open the watch. Everything I am is kept safe in there. Now I’ll put a perception filter on it so the human me won’t think anything of it. He’ll think it’s just a watch. But don’t open it unless you have to!”

The Doctor was in danger, she reminded herself. He was still being hunted. And if Mr. Smith needed to be distracted in order to keep the Doctor safe, well. She’d have to do what she’d have to do.

“I’m sorry,” she said to his image. “I’ll try to keep things in control while you’re gone, but I think this is going to be a hell of a lot more complicated than I bargained for.”


	7. Under The Surface

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter deals with the psychic powers of Tim Latimer, the growing unrest inside our fobwatched Doctor and his human self, as well as some of the other familiar women who haunt Smith's dreams.

Ever since the night when Timothy Latimer found Martha distraught in the courtyard, he’d been having bad dreams.

Tim was … a sensitive boy. That’s what his mother called it.

“He’s just perceptive!” his father used to bellow. “Pays attention, like a good lad. A keen eye and a bit of luck, that’s our Tim!”

Except it was more than that. Tim knew it, and his mother knew it too. Her own mother had been like that, though she hadn’t called it “being sensitive.” She’d called it “the sight.” Yet Mrs. Latimer didn’t want to saddle her poor delicate son with something so onerous as that. He couldn’t read anyone’s mind on purpose, couldn’t do parlor tricks with his “sensitivity.” He just picked up things that others couldn’t, and sometimes it troubled him.

Like, for example, now.

There was something dark hovering around Martha. It was like nothing he’d ever seen or sensed before. When she’d looked in his eyes, for just that second, he saw an image of her that disturbed him very much. Something he didn’t understand and didn’t like to think about.

Martha herself troubled him, even from the moment she arrived. There were sounds in her head that he’d never heard before. Yes, she looked different than anyone else at the school, but it was something else, too. Now, it seemed, whatever it was that was different about her had taken on a sinister tone. Not that she was sinister. On the contrary. Rather, it was like sinister forces had begun to act upon her.

Sometimes Tim heard people’s thoughts without meaning to. He didn’t even realize he was doing it, responding to a question before the questioner had asked it, while the question was still forming in their minds. If he focused, he could hear the difference, between what was actually spoken and what was not. His classmates didn’t like him; pushed him, threatened him, made him shine their shoes and do their coursework. He didn’t know if this was because he was smaller than most everyone else his age, or if they could, on some level, tell that he could sense things about them. And the truth was that he pitied them. He didn’t quite understand it yet, but recently he’d been getting the strangest yet strongest sense that most of them were doomed.

After that night when he saw Martha, he started feeling more and more like he was overhearing someone in particular’s thoughts, but he couldn’t pinpoint who. They were less like thoughts and more like dreams. The dreams of someone powerful. Someone terrifying.

As for himself, he’d started dreaming of muddy fields and guns. Of rats and lightening flashes. In those dreams he felt the kind of loss that you’re not supposed to know about when you’re only sixteen. He knew, as he sometimes did, that these were things that hadn’t happened yet, but would.

Several times in the past week he’d sat up with a start in the middle of the night with the distinct and strange suspicion that he’d been roused by the sound of someone else’s dreaming. This had never happened before. Those dreams, the dreams he overheard, that intruded on him, were about worse things than the fields of muddy graves that Tim saw. Those dreams were about the destruction of planets, the flaming end of whole worlds. Those dreams were shot through with the ice of cold, cold space; of the blackness between the stars, where no light and no life could penetrate. Somewhere, nearby, a sleeping god was raging. Waiting in the dark, always waiting. And that sleeping god had a name. Tim heard it but didn’t understand:

Time Lord.

As each day passed he was more and more filled with a sense of foreboding. The mud, the guns, the ice, the fire, and all around him boys he knew wouldn’t live to see the age of 20. Something was coming, but he couldn’t see what. He just knew it wasn’t good.

***

“Con-cen-trate! There we are now!” Mr. Smith bellowed to his students over the sound of the machine gun fire, as they took aim at the rough target dummies on the other end of the field.

Hutchinson, a good, strong lad, was holding the gun while Latimer, a bright but frail one, held the magazine.

Mr. Smith very much liked instructing gun crew, which he did every Friday morning. It made him feel purposeful. Collected. The sound of the magazines discharging excited him, and he liked giving orders, telling the boys what to do.

He breathed in the crisp October air, feeling better than he had all week. It’s just that lately he’d found himself becoming very … aware … of his uncle’s former servant; the woman who brought his breakfast every morning and who was (frustratingly) acting as if nothing had passed between them.

Not that it had, really. As he kept telling himself - KEPT telling himself - he was only doing his duty. His duty. Only that. It wasn’t his fault that he’d found her so … so … whatever it was that he found her.

He was very worried when she didn’t bring him his breakfast the next morning. Worried that he’d hurt her quite badly after all - or worse - that his, shall we say, indiscretion, the license he took, had disturbed her so much that she wouldn’t return. It wasn’t like she could get him into trouble. But what if she left? He felt something very much like tenderness then, and was surprised when he had to stifle an impulse to go and find her, to see if she was alright. She was just a fragile young girl, after all, even if she was a skivvy from the Antipodes. When he thought about it, nearly everything about her was vulnerable. With just a single word from him she could be cast from the school, and then what would become of her? Back in London, with no one to look out for her, a position-less foundling of her color? Only what became of any such poor, lost girl.

But while he found that idea strangely arousing - how wrong of him, he thought, how very, very wrong - he decided that he would show benevolence. He would explain that disciplining her had only been for her improvement, and he was sorry if it had been meted out too harshly.

Except that then he’d seen her later that day, laughing while she scrubbed floors with the other house maid. Why, she didn’t look injured or disturbed at all! On the contrary, she looked as if she had never been better!

His benevolence had promptly evaporated. How dare she behave as if he had had no effect on her!

That night he dreamed of her - again. His dreams were getting clearer lately and he was starting to remember them when he woke up. So strange they were! That night, he dreamed that he and Martha stood on a balcony bathed in silvery moonlight. They were on the moon! Looking down at Earth, lit up all blue. In the dream he had kissed her, could feel her lips on his so distinctly, just as if it were real. They were trying to escape from … from … an army of rhinos?

He decided that he would tell her about it when she brought his tray. For some reason he felt like he wanted to unsettle her. It was strange, like some reckless force left over from his dreams had started to take hold.

He decided not to get dressed just yet, but to let her find him in his pajamas.

“Come,” he said when she knocked, and felt a kind of satisfaction when he saw her look of surprise at his state of undress.

“Pardon me, Mr. Smith, you’re not dressed yet,” she said. “I can come back later.”

“No, it’s all right, it’s all right. Put it down.,” he said, looking at her darkly. She mustn’t forget that he was the one in control.

Or no, what was he thinking? Well, in for a penny, in for a pound.

She began to pour his tea.

“Do you know, I’ve been dreaming about you,” he said, and was pleased to see her hand slip. The spout of the teapot hit the cup with a clatter, but she quickly righted it.

“Pardon me sir,” she said, not looking at him.

“Oh it’s quite all right,” he said, his eyes following her movements. “Yes I’ve been having these dreams, you know.”

“So you’ve been saying, sir,” she said.

“Yes. I keep dreaming that I’m a man from another world. Well last night you were there, as my …” As his what? His lover? No, he couldn’t say that. He’d employ a euphemism. “As my companion.”

She did look at him then, dead in the eye, with the most unfathomable expression. He liked that.

“Yes, it all took place in the future. In the year of our lord two thousand and seven!”

“That’s silly sir,” she said, rather a little too pointedly. “It’s 1913 and you’re completely human, sir. As human as they come. Now if you’ll excuse me sir, I’d best get back to work.”

He hadn’t even gotten to tell her about the rhinos! But at least she seemed to understand about the night before, didn’t seem to hold it against him. Completely human, she called him. Yes. She knew he had a right to do what he’d done. He was only human, after all.

As the days passed, each morning he told her tidbits from his dreams. Not the parts that disturbed him, or the parts that made him feel things he didn’t understand. He told her lighthearted versions, focusing on plot. Focusing, especially, on how often he seemed to be doing something daring or clever.

But, disappointingly, while she was attentive to his stories, she did not seem particularly impressed, and as the week wore on and his descriptions grew more colorful, she was less and less surprised.

He didn’t like that at all. Not at all.

He noticed that she was working very hard. He listened for complaints about her, wondering if perhaps he had more work to do in reforming her, but he heard none. Perhaps his disciplining of her had achieved the intended effect after all.

 

***

The headmaster, Mr. Rocastle, approached Smith and the boys on the field.

“Cease fire!” he called, and the rat-tat-tat-tat of the bullets stopped.

“Hutchinson, excellent work,” Mr. Smith said.

“Your crew’s on fine form this morning Mr. Smith,” said Mr. Rocastle.

“Headmaster, we can do a lot better,” Hutchinson said. “Latimer was being deliberately shoddy.”

“I’m trying my best,” Latimer protested.

“You need to be better than the best,” the headmaster countered. “Those targets are tribesmen, from the dark continent!”

“That’s exactly the problem, sir,” Latimer replied, looking back at him pointedly. “They only have spears.”

“Oh dear me,” the headmaster said. “Latimer takes it upon himself to make us realize how wrong we all are. I hope, Latimer, that one day you might have a just and proper war in which to prove yourself. Now, resume firing. Mr. Smith, might I have a word?”

The two men stepped away, leaving the boys to reload.

“What can I do for you?” Smith said.

“Yes, well speaking of the dark continent, I wanted to see if the situation with that serving girl of yours had improved.”

“Sir?” Smith said, casually, though not feeling very casually about it at all.

“Yes, well, I was wondering if I was going to need to sack her, but I’ve just been speaking with Matron and it does seem to be working out after all. Whatever your methods, she’s cottoned on. Ever the guiding light. Good work, Mr. Smith.”

“Very good,” Smith said, feeling oddly crestfallen. “So you don’t think that I might need to … discipline her further?”

“What? Oh no. No.” The headmaster said, giving him a rather pointed look. Was he being too transparent? “I don’t think that’s necessary at present.”

“Excellent,” Smith said. “Very glad to hear it.” Why did he feel so disappointed?

“Of course,” Smith added. “You’ll let me know if that should change.”

The headmaster looked at him.

“Mr. Smith, this isn’t the colonies.”

“Of course not, sir,” he said, and they returned to the students.

Latimer and Hutchinson were quibbling. Latimer had been acting very strangely around him lately. Skittish. Smith wondered what it was about.

“Headmaster, permission to give Latimer a beating?” Hutchinson asked.

“Your class, Mr. Smith,” the headmaster said.

He considered it for a moment.

“Permission granted.”

See? He thought, as the boys hauled Latimer away. Nothing wrong with a good beating now and then. It built character. Really, he ought to be able to beat Martha for making him dream about her like he did. But he couldn’t do that. Or at least, probably not.

 

The thing was, there were other women who haunted his dreams as well. A girl with brown hair and apple cheeks, holding a purple flower, who filled him with tenderness. Another, flaxen haired and wearing a tie like a schoolboy, who filled him with pride. They were smiling and waving, but why did he feel so sad?

That week when he dreamed there was another girl. No, a woman. Maybe a goddess. She was too bright to look at. She was golden and burning and she wept. For him. He couldn’t stand it, couldn’t look at her brightness for fear of the moment when it would go out. She was only a star flash, impermanent, so staggeringly brief in her existence but still it was enough. A look from her could create a whole universe.

Then, mercifully, the dream changed and he was lost in puzzles, in solving, in fixing, in saving. His mind whizzed with theories and equations, darting through a maze of traps and villains. Foes of metal, of vapor, of ice, of fire. But he always eluded them, and in doing so, felt a lightness. All around him was impermanence, and while he was not truly forever, he was close to it. As long as he kept moving; He could walk in forever, even if he couldn’t remain there.

She was there, in that place. The golden woman whose eyes burned. Rose, he named her finally, the sound like a prayer, like an ache, thudding in him, pulling at the space between his two hearts. Rose Rose Rose Rose Rose.

And, of course; Martha. Martha who both connected him to and separated him from what it was that he wanted. So often it was she who was beside him. But the difference with Martha was that unlike all of the others he saw, she was still there when he awoke. Goddesses and ghosts were one thing. She existed.

She was the only one who was real.


	8. A Fine Line

Finally, after three more long days, it happened.

Smith had finished with his afternoon class and was walking back to his rooms through the empty halls when he heard a loud crash. He peered around the corner towards the kitchens and there she was: Martha, down on her knees, her back to him, surrounded by broken crockery. She was mopping futilely with a little cloth at a flood of spilled tea.

Immediately, he was filled with something that felt uncannily like relief.

“Martha?” he called to her. “What have you done?”

Oh fuck, Martha thought: And I’ve been trying so hard.

Before she could even turn around he was on her, hoisting her to her feet by the back of her dress.

“Sir!”

“You’re coming with me.”

He marched her down the deserted servants’ hall, flung her into the empty pantry and shut the door behind them.

He didn’t have his cane. Oh well, he’d have to improvise. She backed away from him against the wooden table, looking hunted. She seemed so innocent in her plain black dress and white lace cap, her throat long and delicate. He tried to keep his voice calm.

“You are aware, I take it, that your position here is somewhat precarious?” he said. There was something unreadable in her eyes that wasn’t quite fear but was good enough. It might even be better.

“Sir, I’m very sorry, I was just bringing Mr. Poole his tea and I just, the tray –-“

He raised his finger in the air, and she silenced.

“Say no more about it,” he said. “I’m aware of the efforts you’ve been exerting, but you see, the trouble is that it isn’t entirely up to me. We can’t have this kind of thing happening. Not at all. I shouldn’t like to see you with nowhere to go.”  
He approached her, carefully, the way one approached a wild animal, and her eyes had a satisfyingly wild look in them.

“Sir,” she said, “I really, really don’t think you should do this.”  
His move towards her was slow but inexorable.

“Ssshhh, come now,” he said, now looming over her, his fingers very lightly touching the sides of her shoulders. “Don’t struggle. You’ll only make it worse.”

In an instant his grip had tightened and she was facedown on the table, his strong hands holding her there until she stopped fighting him.

“That’s better,” he said. “You’ve simply got to learn your lesson.”  
There was something like caution trying to make itself heard over the roar in his blood, but it hadn’t a prayer. Before he even knew what he was doing he’d flung her skirts over her hips and found the buttons on the sides of her drawers that held them up. One little movement and they could be off. But then what? He was filled with energy and the need to exert his power over her, whether through violence or desire he wasn’t really sure. Did it matter? Was there a difference? He toyed with the little button at her hip, his chest heaving. When he’d disciplined her before he’d been controlled, collected. This was different. There was a word for what he felt now, he was sure he knew what it was. It was just on the tip of his tongue. His roaring blood had redirected downward and he felt himself harden. The word he wanted was ‘passion.’ He was angry that she could have this effect on him, but delighted, at the same time, to have her thus in his grasp so that he could make her pay for it. The combination was intoxicating. He felt powerful, like the man he was every night in his dreams.

STOP! Something in him protested.

Shut up, he said to it. Besides, she was his responsibility - HIS - and he had every right — EVERY RIGHT — to … instruct her … as he saw fit.

Martha could feel him gripping the back of her dress with his left hand, holding her down. She knew he didn’t have a cane, knew he couldn’t seriously hurt her. Would he spank her? Could he … might he go further? The thought of it made her lightheaded, but she knew she couldn’t let the Doctor do that to himself.

“Are you going to behave yourself now?” he said over her, his voice sounding anything but calm. “We can’t have you jeopardizing your position.”

“Yes!” she said. “Please don’t, I mean, I promise. I promise to try harder.”

“Don’t cry out,” he said, and she felt his palm come down hard against her backside through the thin cloth. It made a satisfying smacking sound despite the barrier of fabric, and she felt herself rock against the table. She shut her eyes. He hit her again, harder this time, and again, and again. He was spanking her! She thought of how he’d looked lying next to her in that Elizabethan inn, which seemed so very long ago now, his long limbs stretched out on the hard mattress. That night had been torture, wanting him to reach out to her, to hold her, to press his weight onto her. And now — now! Here he was, those same long limbs, those same long fingers, taking control of her body. He was working himself up into a frenzy, and a heat started to build inside of her. She began to cry out with each strike.

“Quiet!” he said, but he was making subtle noises too now, grunting as he struck her. “If you can’t be quiet, you’re going to make it so! Much! Worse!”

She thought she knew what that might mean.

“No, don’t!” she said, thinking of the Doctor again, of him as he was and not as she fantasized him to be; the Doctor who had not reached out to her in the Elizabethan inn, nor during any of the nights when she’d been so close. He wouldn’t want this. He was not hers.

“What did I just say about being quiet?” he said in anger, or maybe excitement, or desperation, or all three. As if spurred on by her refusal, he stopped spanking her and once again let his hands wander to the buttons on the sides of her drawers. Without a word he undid the button on the left and peeled the fabric back to reveal the smooth dark skin of her upper left cheek.

“Oh dear god,” he breathed. Her skin was flushed red from his ministrations, and his mind was wiped clean of all rational thought. It didn’t matter that this was the pantry and it was only teatime, that anyone could discover them at any moment. His body ached and he wanted her. He would have her. Now.  
But wait, now hold on …

There were footsteps, coming down the hall, and he snapped back to his senses. Good God, what had he almost allowed himself to do?

“Compose yourself,” he said to her, and adjusting his erection so that it would be less visible, he threw the pantry door open and strode quickly from the room.

 

That was close, he thought, shutting his own door behind him at last. Alone in his chamber, the fever calmed, he couldn’t quite understand what had happened.

She’d have to be sent away, he thought. There was something about her, something that brought out something wicked inside of him. Wasn’t he a good man? Yes, of course he was. A good, respectable man, who ought to lead a respectable life. Who DID lead a respectable life. He was a man to whom nothing extraordinary had ever happened.

I need a companion, he thought.

No, not a companion, he corrected himself. A wife. Someone respectable, someone well suited. If he had these … carnal desires … then surely they ought to be exorcised within the sanctity of the marriage bed and not on the bloody wayward kitchen staff!

The marriage bed. He thought of Martha as he had dreamed of her, his hands on her naked breasts, her legs wrapped … no! Not her. She really would have to go. She was too much of a distraction. What about … the Matron? She was … blonde. Nice. Sweet natured. The kind of woman a respectable man such as himself could marry.

He would consider it, he told himself as he took off his jacket and waistcoat and lay down on his bed, trying desperately not to think of Martha and what he’d just done to her, and failing. The sounds she’s made as he hit her, her smooth skin blushing from his touch. He unbuttoned his trousers. She really would have to be sent away.

***

Martha stood in the TARDIS console room in knickers, tee shirt and fuzzy slippers, brushing her teeth. God, modern oral hygiene felt good. With real toothpaste, tasting of wonderful minty flueride that foamed and foamed until you were forced to spit it out or look rabid. Of course she had her 1913 toothbrush back at the school, which she might have been more apt to call a “toothbrush” than a toothbrush, and the dread “tooth cream” that accompanied it. But it just wasn’t the same.

It was Saturday, and she was due to meet Jenny at the pub in an hour. Would Smith be there? Probably, she thought, but whether she was dreading or anticipating it she couldn’t really tell. For the last five days, since the incident in the pantry, she’d been on pins and needles. Bringing in his breakfast or his tea, straightening his papers, dusting, changing the sheets. He ignored her with a kind of gruff indifference. Evilly, she’d even tried testing him by knocking over a paperweight on purpose while he sat reading, but he’d only slammed his book shut and stormed out of the room without looking at her. Still, she couldn’t help but feel that something was about to burst.

She tried to come out to the TARDIS every few days or so, whenever errands or her workload would allow, but this time it had been more than a week since her last visit. She didn’t really need to make the trip; she’s even brought the jar of healing chula ointment back to the school with her. The spanking had left her far less sore than the caning, but the marks were shockingly apparent, dark purple and tinged with green. It didn’t look controlled at all, as the caning had, but quite violent, and this frightened her. Frightened and excited her, to see the physical evidence of both his passion and dominance. She thought, is something wrong with me?

She needed a reality check, because she was starting to forget about the Doctor just a little bit. Of course she couldn’t really forget him, she never would, but she felt herself being pulled into this thing with John Smith, whatever it was, whoever he was, and she was frightened to think about how far it might go — about how far she wanted it to go.

Having been given the afternoon off, it meant she had hours in the TARDIS at her leisure. She’d flopped onto her bed and reveled in the softness of the mattress. She’d drawn a hot bubble bath and lay in it reading from the Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine, and then a bit of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. She’d already read it. It hadn’t technically been published yet in her own timeline of 2007, but the Doctor had given it to her. After her bath she wandered into the galley with a towel wrapped around her, to see what they had in. It wasn’t much. Six bananas, miraculously still fresh, and a clear plastic bag of colored gummy candies. They were very stale, but she ate them anyway, chewing and chewing. She hardly ever got sweets now. Then she put on her loungewear and read some more: 1913 could wait a while yet.

 

With the TARDIS in its current dormant state, most of it was shut off from her. Just her suite, the Doctor’s suite, the galley and the medical bay remained open.

Standing there now in her fuzzy slippers, toothbrush still in mouth, she wasn’t sure if she should watch the Doctor’s instruction video again or not. She thought about the spanking in the pantry and then shut her eyes tight, magicking it away. She reached out to the console with her free hand and switched the video on.

“Accio Time Lord,” she said through her toothpaste-filled mouth as his image came on screen. There was that same furrowed brow, same crazy hair and wild eyes, his same beloved face. The fucker.

“Is this working?” his image asked her. “Martha?”

No, she couldn’t watch it again, couldn’t listen to him rambling on, oblivious to the utter mess he’d landed them in.

“I’ve had it with you,” she told the screen. “Are we going to shag or not?”

And with that she got up and went to spit out her toothpaste and finish getting ready, leaving him talking to an empty room.


	9. Lights in the Sky

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Contains dialogue from Human Nature, with deviations.

The night was cold, and Martha and Jenny sat huddled over their half pints in the pub yard, shivering despite their coats, hats and scarves. Martha had felt warm and relaxed after her hot bath and afternoon sojourn in the TARDIS, but the damp November air of the English countryside was fast undoing that.

“Ooo, it’s freezing out here. Why can’t we have a drink inside the pub!” she groused.

“Now don’t be ridiculous. You do get these notions!” Jenny replied, laughing, then taking a sip of her lager. “Life may be different where you come from. Suffragettes and … what was the other thing you said?”

“Civil rights,” Martha said miserably into her drink.

“Yes, them. Suffragettes and civil rights. They’re all well and good, but that’s London. That’s miles away.”

“But don’t you just want to scream sometimes?” Martha said.

“Having to bow and scrape and behave. Don’t you just want to tell ‘em?”

“I don’t know,” Jenny replied. “Things must be different in your country, but it’s not like that here. Not yet at any rate.”

“I suppose.” Martha said, lifting her gaze to the starry sky.

“Thank God I’m not staying!”

Then she looked at her friend, apple-cheeked and red-nosed in the cold, smiling across at her.

“Oh Jenny, I wish you could see it all. You’d love it, where I’m from. I wish you could come with me.”

“Haha! If only,” Jenny said.

“It’s just over a month now, and then I’m free as the wind,” Martha said.

“Yes, you do keep saying that,” Jenny replied. “The inheritance. And the bank letters really say it will only be another six weeks before it clears? You’re sure it’s really yours?”

“Yes,” Martha said, feeling sad all of a sudden. She didn’t like lying to Jenny but she had to make up something. They’d grown so close, and she couldn’t just leave when the three months were up without any warning at all. Besides, she’d sworn Jenny to secrecy. Before long she’d be free of the drudgery, free of the cold mornings, the condescending looks, the powerlessness. But Jenny wouldn’t.

She’d be free of Mr. Smith too, but she didn’t like to look too closely at that thought. She wasn’t sure how she felt about it. She was happy to think she’d have the Doctor back, and yet …

“No Jenny, I mean it. You really could come with me,” she urged suddenly. And why not? Would the Doctor really refuse her, would he dare, after everything she’d been through? She’d like to see him try.

“Oh I couldn’t,” Jenny said, smiling. “Besides, where are you going to go?”

“Anywhere! Just look up there. Imagine you could go all the way out to the stars!” Martha said, feeling suddenly giddy at the thought of taking her friend back to modern London, or out traveling the cosmos with them. She knew Jenny didn’t have any family. If she didn’t want to travel with them, she’d leave her absolutely anywhere that she wanted to go. She would even take her back to Farringham in 1913 if that was what she desired, but first she’d give her the choice of a better life. At least that.

“You don’t half say mad things,” Jenny mused.

“Trust me,” Martha said, smiling at her friend. “That’s where I’m going. Into the sky, all the way out. Just pretend for a second. Look up there and pick a star, and that’s where we’ll go once I’m free.”

The two women were gazing upward when a strange green light suddenly flashed overhead, like a comet, and disappeared into the trees.

“Did you see that?” Martha asked, a bad feeling starting in the pit of her stomach.

“See what?” Jenny asked, unfazed. “The star?”

“Did you see it, though? Right up there, just for a second!”

“Martha, there’s nothing there. Falling star. Seen ‘em loads of times.”

Just then the Matron appeared, running out of the darkness of the shaded path and into the pool of light cast by the pub windows.

“Matron, are you all right?” Martha asked, worry growing in her.

“Did you see that?” the Matron asked, trying to catch her breath. “There was something in the woods. This light.”

“Oh… no,” Martha muttered. Here we go, she thought.

“What’s all this?” said a voice. It was Smith, emerging from the door of the pub wearing a hat and overcoat. “Anything wrong, ladies? Far too cold to be standing around in the dark, don’t you know.”

“Ah Mr. Smith,” Jenny said. “We’ve just seen a light streak across the sky and fall behind those trees there.”

Martha didn’t want to look at him.

“Well now, no need for alarm,” he said, clucking. “That is what is commonly called a meteorite! It’s just rocks falling to the ground, that’s all. They’re quite harmless.”

Another person stepped out of the pub. It was Philips, the Maths teacher.

“I say Smith, what’s all this commotion?” he said.

“Our girls here have seen a shooting star and were just a little confused about it,” he chuckled.

Git, Martha thought.

“Oh that is funny,” Philips said. “But you know I saw some rather strange lights myself earlier, as I was walking over. Anyway I’ll see you back at the school then. I’ll just … pop back in for a final.” And he ducked back inside.

“I went behind those trees there,” Jenny said once Philips had gone. The Matron was very quiet.

“Oh no,” Smith said, chuckling again. “It only looks like it’s fallen. The light you’ve seen was the meteorite burning up. They always look close, when actually they’re miles off. There won’t be anything left of it. Just a cinder. A meteoroid, now, those are found from time to time, but it’s highly unlikely that —-“

“Thanks,” Martha said, cutting him off, her eyes still on the sky.

“Yes, well,” Smith said. “I should escort you back to the school.” His eyes slid over Martha without quite catching. “Ladies?” He looked from the Matron to Jenny and then back. Jenny raised her eyebrows hopefully at Martha.

“No, we’re fine, thanks,” Martha said, still not looking at him.  
“Thank you anyway sir,” Jenny said to him.

“I might as well go back,” the Matron said, somewhat shyly.

“Right,” said Smith, moving to stand awkwardly by the Matron. It was dark, but Martha could swear she could see the woman blush.

“Then I shall bid you goodnight,” he said somewhat tersely, in Martha’s general direction, and strolled off down the darkened path with the Matron at his side.

“Jenny, where was that? On the horizon, where the light was headed. Where did it look to you like it fell?” Martha asked.

“But Mr. Smith just said —“

“Nevermind him. Where did it fall?”

“That’s by Cooper’s Field over there, away east. You don’t think-“

“Come on then,” Martha said, and set off at a run into the darkness of the trees.

“You can’t just run off!” Jenny called after her. “It’s dark! You’ll break a leg!”

Seeing that she didn’t have much choice in the matter, Jenny followed.

“See?” Jenny said, as they came to a breathless stop and stood on the edge of an open pasture. “Here’s Cooper’s Field. No fallen stars. As your Mr. Smith says, nothing to see.”

“Maybe,” Martha said.

“Well,” Jenny said. “Come on then.”

“You go ahead,” Martha replied. “I’ll just take a look around.”

Jenny looked a little worried.

“Martha! I can’t leave you alone out here!”

“Why not?”

“They’ll be locking the gate any minute.”

“That’s okay, you go on ahead and I’ll meet you back in the room. I’ll be able to get in.”

The two women looked at each other. It was possible to climb over the wall, as they both knew. The boys did it all the time. It just wasn’t a very good idea.

“Martha, I can’t get caught. They’d send me packing in no time. I haven’t got …”

“What?” Martha asked, but she knew. The thing that was sometimes a joke and sometimes a thorn between them.

“I haven’t got your … protection.”

“Jenny, you know it isn’t really like that.”

“But it is like that,” Jenny said, her eyes narrowing a little. Was she jealous? Concerned? “I mean, you’ve said that naught has happened, and sure I believe you. But that doesn’t mean, well. I’ve seen you, the way you look at him. And he looks at you, too. And after what happened … I’m surprised he hasn’t ravished you by now.”

Martha blushed, thankful for the dark night around them. Dark clouds had started to move in, covering up the moon and starlight.

“Anyway,” Jenny said, just a little coldly. “I really do have to get back.”

“Jenny! I’m sorry, I just need to take a look, I can explain it all later, I promise. All of it. Even about Mr. Smith. Your friendship means a lot to me.”

Jenny softened. “Oh stop now,” but she was smiling. “You mad thing. I’ll head back but I want to see you back in our room in an hour or I’m telling Nurse Redfern.”

“Jenny!”

“Oh all right, of course I won’t. But hurry back, okay? You’ve got me worried.”

“I promise Jenny. I really will. And then,” she took a deep breath. “I’ll tell you everything. I will.”

“See you in an hour,” Jenny said, and trudged off through the trees towards the school.

It was starting to rain now, though not more than a soft mist. There was something about the open pasture that unnerved Martha, so she stuck to the shade of the trees, still decked in their autumn foliage. She wanted to avoid getting drenched but also, she thought that maybe it was better if she wasn’t seen. She scanned the sky for the strange lights, for falling stars, anything. But the clouds had blacked everything out. All she could see were the lights from the school in one direction, and the subtle glow of the a few windows in town in the other.

Maybe this was a bad idea. She didn’t even know what the aliens looked like. What was she going to do if she met them? Shout? Intimidate them with her knowledge of the human adrenal system? This was ridiculous.

“Oh Doctor,” she said to the cold, wet night. “I really do need you.”

After about twenty minutes of waiting, for what she wasn’t quite sure, she decided to head back. It was raining harder now, in a soft but steady drizzle. She made her way to the school gates, which were indeed locked. Ancient, thick stemmed ivy grew over the wall, however, and she knew this was how the boys managed to climb in and out.

Her shoes were slippery, with no traction at all, but still she managed to find footholds in the ivy and pull herself up the wall. Her coat scraped against the wall and the wet greenery, and would surely be ruined. She made it to the top, swung her legs over, and was just trying to find a foothold on the other side, when —-

“Stop! You there!”

A man’s shout startled her. She lost her grip, tried frantically to regain it, and failed, sliding down the wall towards the ground, the wet leaves slipping through her fingers. She landed with a thudding squelch in the mud. She tried to get up, slipped, and fell forward onto the wet ground.

Someone was running towards her, and then a man was standing over her.

“What is the meaning of this?” he demanded. She looked up at him. It was Rocastle.

“I’m, I’m—-“ she started, but he was already hauling her to her feet with a tight grip on her upper arm.

He just looked at her, fuming. “I won’t have this. I’ll have none of this at all, ” he said. He turned on his heel and marched her towards the kitchens.


	10. Punishment

“Ah Mr. Smith, just the man I need.”

Martha was standing in the kitchen, looking down at the state of her dress with Rocastle beside her, when Smith came striding by.

“What is the meaning of this?” he asked, coming into the kitchen.

Rocastle gestured at Martha.

“Caught her climbing over the wall, Smith. Climbing. Over the wall. I can’t have this. I’m sorry Smith, I know she has been with your family for a long time but I’m not running a charity for refugees. This is a school and there are standards to uphold.”

“Of course sir. I’ll handle it, sir.”

“Do.”

Rocastle stormed out, and Smith took her roughly by the arm.

“Come with me,” he said.

 

"Tell me why I shouldn’t sack you," he demanded as he pushed her through the door to his rooms. He was tired of this. Tired of being disobeyed.

"You can’t sack me," she begged. Or was it more like insisting? "Trust me, please. You just can’t."

"Why not?"

"Because … look I can’t explain it to you. I need to be here. I think you … need me."

He felt suddenly exposed.

"What do you mean by this impertinence?" he said. "How dare you speak to me in this manner." Because of course he did need her. He did. He needed her, like a thing he could keep secret. He needed her, with him and controlled, tied up and blindfolded in his bed for him to use at his pleasure, to know that she could not get away. Not ever. His and only his.

He felt himself stirring but he pushed it away, ripping his mind from thoughts of her, and instead thinking suddenly:

the thermodynamic cycle of a closed system which returns to its original state, the heat Qin supplied to a closed system in one stage of the cycle minus that Qout removed from it in another stage of the cycle, equals the net work done by the system.

What was that? What did that even mean? He wasn’t sure, but he was in control again.

"I could …" Martha ventured. "I could accept a punishment instead?"

God, could she really be doing this? I mean she’d liked it, before. But Smith had liked it and that was the important thing. She needed him to keep her around so that she could protect the Doctor.

I can’t believe I’m doing this, she thought.

Smith swallowed. “Well, I suppose … if it’s really just that you haven’t learned your lesson and not that you are … are … I mean … that you’re, that you’re not beyond reform. I do make it my business to educate. And, and if you show willingness to change…”

"Oh, I’m willing, sir. To change. Very willing," she said, maybe a little too eagerly.

Was this too much? Sod it. What else was she supposed to do?

Smith realized what was before him and his blood once again began to change course, rushing downwards. No, stop it.

"Right then," he said sternly. "But … look at the state of you. Your dress. You’ll dirty my study." There was something like a question or a dare in his eyes.

"Would you like me to take it off?" Martha asked.

YES YES YES his brain screamed to him, and also NO NO NO.

"That might be prudent, I do believe, yes," he said finally. His heart rate increased and the room was suddenly very warm.

No, he thought. I must keep control. He tried to vanish imaginings of her butterscotch thighs. He then thought:

when two initially isolated systems in separate but nearby regions of space each in thermodynamic equilibrium with itself but not necessarily with each other are then allowed to interact they will eventually-reach-a-mutual-thermodynamic-equilibrium.

Okay. He wasn’t sure what it meant but it kept him focused. A quick caning, that’s all. Then he would send her on her way. He would. He would.

He turned away from her and went to fetch his rattan cane. He heard rustling sounds. The sound of her dress going over her head. He gulped. Picked the cane up. Gripped it. His mind gabbled at him:

if-two-systems-are-in-thermal-equilibrium-with-a-third-system-they-must-be-in-thermal-equilibrium-with-each-other-and-this-law-helps-define-the-notion! Of! Temperature!

What? Temperature! Two systems. With each other. Finding equilibrium. Allowed to interact. Nearby heat. Reaching a mutual … a mutual …. a mutual … No, no no. Not like that. No. Okay history then? You like history. Napoleon. Born August 15th 1769, revolutionized military training, grueling marches, long nights in the cold mud. Yes?

Smith felt calm. He tapped the cane against his palm, steeling himself.

Yes, okay good. Expanded territories, into Egypt. Africa. Penetrated the dark continent. The dark continent with searing sands and hot, hot, savage jungles, dripping wet, the beautiful Nubian women and their naked dark breasts oh god. Wait. Wait no. Marching. Marching home. Yes that’s it. Control. Control. Writing to Josephine, telling her not to bathe because he was coming home and wanted her to smell more potently of herself while he, while he –.

Now hold on, the voice in his head said. Actually not that last part, you didn’t think that, I was just –-.

Shut up, he told it.

He turned to Martha.

Heat. Jungles. Josephine. Naked and writhing under the most powerful man in the world, begging and crying out.

Sex. John Smith had never had it. He searched his memory. He hadn’t had it. Hadn’t he? He had not. But hold on, why not?

There Martha stood, quivering, the firelight on her bare arms. Her chemise tucked into a pale corset, synching her waist, her hips flaring out from her waist and then again, ever so slightly, at the top of her thighs, her petticoats falling just to mid calf and below, her shapely ankles under black stockings.

His mind seized, flailed.

"Gravity is the attraction between two objects exerting force on one another," he blurted out.

Her face changed, her eyes going wide. “What?”

"Ah, sorry? I’m not sure … I just …"And he felt suddenly like he was falling through space. The floor was under him but also … not.

She was very still, and he felt more words spilling out of him.

"Well," he heard himself say, "actually I was just about to describe the fundamental interaction of gravitation as a result of spacetime being curved by matter and energy, as used to determine the spacetime geometry resulting from the presence of mass-energy and linear momentum."

Her mouth fell open and she gasped, her face lighting up.

He dropped the cane. In three steps he was in front of her, towering over her at his full height, her head arched back, her mouth opened slightly, helplessly. Whatever part of him that had flailed and protested was pushed under and forgotten.

"Enough of this," he said. He reached his arm around her waist and hauled her off of her feet, dragging her to the sofa. He sat down, throwing her roughly over his lap, her knees bent, feet pointing upwards. He shifted forward, balancing her better, his own feet firmly planted and his legs at an angle, so that she slid down towards his hips and over his crotch.

"Are you going to behave now?" he said.

"Yes," she said. "Yes yes."

"Good," he said, gathering her skirts in his fist and pushing them up and out of his way, feeling her squirm over him. There were two petticoats, the second layer thinner, shorter, so soft to the touch. He was panting now, getting hard. She’d feel it, but it didn’t matter. It wasn’t her place to care. He was certainly past caring. He raised his hand up.

"To whom do you answer?" he asked sternly.

"You!" she said, and he felt a rush. He brought his hand down hard against her arse with a satisfying smack. She cried out and rocked against him from the impact. He did it again. Oh yes. This wicked women, why did she make him like this and why did it feel so good? His slaps were smaller, sharper, faster. Again. Again. Again.

Martha felt herself getting lost, the fabric of her drawers and his hardness under her creating friction, rubbing against her like a warm ache as she surrendered to him. She clenched and felt the pressure increasing, building, climbing higher as she rocked. If she could just, could just … oh god. Oh no. No. Yes. Oh god. Oh.

"Stop," she said, and he did.

He pushed her off of him and down onto the sofa, gripping her shoulders, then backed away to the other end of the sofa. He was on his knees, crouching above her. Both of their chests were heaving.

"Are you a maid?" he asked.

"Sorry, what?"

"I mean, a virgin. Are you –?"

"No," she said, her eyes a challenge. She wasn’t sure what she was thinking. She wasn’t thinking anything, her mind wiped blank by want.

His hands were fumbling with the buttons on his trousers, undoing them. “You’ve been with men?” he asked, looking desperate.

"Yes," she said. His eyes were on her mouth, her breasts, the place where her drawers had been shoved up to reveal where gartered stocking ended and thighs began.

"How many?"

She didn’t need to think about it.

"Eleven."

He was breathing hard, his hand on himself now, but she couldn’t see, the fabric of his untucked shirt falling over him. God, was this happening?

"Did you enjoy it?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Did you –," he tried to ask her, so low it was almost a growl.

"Did I come? Yes." She said, and he groaned.

"And just now? When I --?" he asked, frantic, his eyes wild.

"No," she said. “But I could.”

"Oh god.”

He lunged towards her, his weight falling on her, his hands shaking now, attempting to tear at the laces on the back of her corset. But it wasn’t him. Not the Doctor. It wasn’t right. She heard the Doctor’s voice in her memory: “Don’t let me hurt anyone.” She rolled out from under him and onto the floor by the fire, stood up, and grasped the mantel to steady herself. Her hand closed over something cool and metal.

The watch.

She looked over and he was staring at her in the most peculiar way, his shirt hanging down to protect his modesty.

As soon as she touched the watch on the mantel, John Smith felt his vision shift, as if the room was coming into focus. He stood up and turned away from her to adjust his clothing. He couldn’t catch his breath. It was like something was barreling towards him, some awareness, like a dream he was on the verge of remembering but which he did not want to remember.

“I … I …” he said. His clothing fixed, he turned around to face her.

“Mr. Smith? You look pale, are … are you okay? Oh god.”

She let go of the watch on the mantel and stepped towards him. He sank back down onto the chesterfield and put his head in his hands.

“Mr. Smith?”

“Martha I believe I’ve … maybe had a pint too many. I think you should leave.”

Now that he was pushing her away, she didn’t want him to. For fuck’s sake, why did this have to be so confusing?

“Did you hear me?" He said. "Please … just go. I’m unwell.”

“Yes sir,” she said. She retrieved her dress and put it back on. The Doctor — no, Smith. She meant Smith. Not the Doctor. He wasn't here, though she'd just felt his presence when she touched the watch. Smith didn’t move as she slipped silently from the room.


	11. A Fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Contains dialogue from Human Nature

There was nothing else he could think of to do. After the maid left his room, John Smith reached with trembling fingers for the brandy decanter and glass on the sideboard and poured himself a drink. He tossed the amber liquid back in one quick motion and then poured another. And another. It burned his throat and a warmth spread across his chest, making his limbs feel loose and his hands tingly.

It was too dark in the room, lit just from the glow of the firelight and his desk lamp, and he went about turning the gas in all the fixtures up to full until the room was blazing. Then he went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face.

“Stop it,” he said to his reflection as he dried himself with a towel. He felt strangely that he didn’t know the man that stared back at him — flushed, sweating, his hair and clothing all a jumble. He went back into the study, regarded his empty glass for a moment, and then decided to cut out the middleman by swigging straight from the decanter.

“This is witchcraft,” he said to himself, and then laughed. Hearing a note of hysteria in himself he cut the laugh off and took another swig. He picked up his journal from the desk, sat down on the floor with his back to his bed, and opened it up. He flicked through the already filled pages where he’d started to record his strange dreams from these past weeks: the metal men, the grotesque monsters, and one page where he’d drawn the face of the golden goddess he sometimes dreamed about.

Why had he even drawn her? Those dreams were the most terrifying of all, and he always woke from them feeling empty and heartsick. He traced his finger along where he’d written her name under the portrait: Rose. His heart seized in his chest and he was struck by a wave of powerful physical desire. He was hard again. He thought of Martha under him as he’d been just now, her soft body and the hard boning of her corset, how her knees had fallen open for him when he launched himself onto her. Then the memory shifted and he was fumbling through white petticoats under a pink satin skirt, his hands sliding up the thigh of a different woman. It was nothing more than a moment, but he couldn’t place where it came from and this scared him. He took his journal and threw it across the room and downed another gulp of brandy. He could hardly taste the alcohol now.

“I’m cracking up,” he said, running his hands through his hair and making it stand on end. “I must be ill.” Who did he think he was? He wasn’t some rogue in a romantic novel, and had never hurt anyone in his life, had never even wanted to. Yet he pictured himself slamming Martha up against a wall, of pinning her arms down, of tying her up, of pulling her hair, of his hands gripping her hips as he slammed into her. He wanted to come in her, on her — on her breasts and throat and face. He wanted to force his cock into her mouth. He could hear her gasps and moans from when he’d spanked or caned her — three times now! His erection throbbed painfully and he groaned, resisting the urge to touch himself. He took another large gulp of the brandy. The room had started spinning now: good. He wanted unconsciousness, a night without dreams. He managed to stagger around the room to turn the lights out. He was more unsteady than he expected. As he went to turn off the sconce above the fireplace he stumbled and knocked a number of objects from the mantel onto the floor — a framed butterfly pinned to a board, a small fossil, and an old fob watch.

He picked up the fob watch and forgot what he was doing for a second. Why was he drunk? Oh that’s right: Martha. He put the watch down absentmindedly on his desk. This was all Martha’s fault. She was tempting him, throwing herself at him! Mocking him, it felt like. Flaunting her scandalously wanton past. That harlot.

He managed to turn out the rest of the lights in the study and collapsed on his bed, still fully clothed, and fell into mercifully deep sleep.

When he awoke, his body stiff and his head pounding, the sunrise was peaking through the windows of the room. He sat up with a start, relieved to have woken so early; he didn’t want to encounter Martha when she came in with his morning tray.

He filled his bath with cold water and stepped in quickly, yelping as it sloshed up his back and over his naked stomach. His head still ached, and it wasn’t until he sat in the water for a few moments that his morning erection would go away. He dunked his head, sputtering as he emerged again, and then climbed out to get dressed and get away before any of the serving staff could discover him. Besides, he had grading to do, and scooped up the massive pile of students’ notebooks from his desk and left the room. He’d go and work in his classroom, but first … he needed to do something about his headache.

***

Joan Redfern was just straightening a vase of flowers on her desk when there came a knock at the door. This surprised her, as it was too early for the boys to be up and about yet; their morning bell wouldn’t ring to wake them for another hour.

Ever since her husband’s death thirteen years prior, she often had difficulty sleeping through the night. She was a light sleeper, and even in the brief years of her marriage as a young woman she would often wake just before dawn and could only be lulled back to sleep again by putting her arms around the comforting form of her sleeping husband. Since his death, even five or six hours seemed like a decent nights worth to her. She’d been up before the sun this morning, but hardly thought anything of it anymore.

She went to the door of the infirmary and opened it. There stood the new history teacher, John Smith, looking pale and haggard. She suppressed a smile and was aware that she was blushing. He’d had a few pints when he walked her home the night before, but hadn’t seemed too drunk. Now, however, he was clearly hungover.

“Matron,” he said to her. “I’m so sorry to bother you.”

Bother her? She was delighted. Even in this rumpled state he was still very handsome, and part of her hoped that maybe he’d come to her this morning so early out of lovesickness, to make a declaration. But this was preposterous. She guessed he was a few years younger than her, but she wasn’t sure. She tried to tamp down her romantic expectations. She hadn’t been interested in anyone since her husband’s death, and the new rush of emotions was disconcerting.

“Not at all Mr. Smith,” she said, as she welcomed him in through the door. “You’re not troubling me in the slightest. Are you … unwell?” She didn’t mention the hangover. She wanted to preserve his dignity.

“Er, yes,” he said. “I do believe so. May have caught a cold walking back last night, even though we did manage to avoid the weather.”

She was looking at him in a warm way that felt familiar, though he couldn’t place it. Her light brown hair was framed by the morning light, making it look almost blonde. He blushed and started to stammer.

“I don’t suppose that you, I mean, that you could, um, well,” he said. She watched him, agonizing. “I don’t suppose you’ve got anything for a headache?” he finished.

 

Once she had him sorted, he picked up his stack of students’ notebooks and departed the infirmary. He hadn’t gotten halfway down the hallway when he heard the Matron call after him.

“Mr. Smith?”

As he turned, the notebook on the top fell off of the pile and tumbled to the floor, some loose leafs of paper falling out.

“Oh dear, let me help you,” she said, rushing to him. A few more books escaped from atop the pile.

“No, no I’ve got it,” Smith said, trying to bend down. A few more of the notebooks fell. "Er, no,” he said. “How best to retrieve — tell you what, if you could take these.”

He handed the stack of notebooks to the Matron and bent to pick up those that had fallen. Standing up, he noticed that her cheeks were flushed. She really was rather pretty — he hadn’t quite noticed it before.

They looked at each other somewhat awkwardly. He knew she was a widow and wondered, briefly, if she was a "merry" one as the saying went. Could she be persuaded into an affair and save him from himself?

“Mr. Smith,” she said.

“Yes?”

“I appear to be holding your books.”

“Yes, so you are. Sorry, sorry. Just let me,” he said. What an idiot he was. He tried to take the books from her but worried that he wouldn’t be able to do so without touching the front of her dress, and that was more than he could handle right now.

“No, why don’t I take half,” she said, and tilted the top of the pile towards him.

“Ah, brilliant idea,” he said stupidly, hating himself. “Brilliant. Perfect. Division of labour.”

“We make quite a team,” she replied, beaming.

“Don't we just,” he said. Thinking, inexplicably, of Martha’s feverish eyes in the light from his fire.

“So, these books,” the Matron said, drawing him back. “Were they being taken in any particular direction?”

He let her walk him towards the classroom. Why not?

“Thank you Matron, I’m much obliged,” he said.

“Truth be told,” she said to him, “when it's just you and me, I'd much rather you call me Nurse Redfern. Matron sounds rather … well, matronly.”

“Ah. Nurse Redfern it is then.”

“Though we've known each other all of two months, you could even say Joan.”

“Joan?”

“That's my name.”

“Well, obviously.”

“And it's John, isn't it?” she said.

“Yes, yes, it is, yes.”

They’d reached the landing where the stairs that lead down to the east corridor and his classroom turned. She paused, indicating the faculty notice board by the window.

“Have you seen this, John?” she asked, blushing and avoiding his gaze. "The annual dance at the village hall tonight. It's nothing formal, but rather fun by all accounts. Do you think you'll go?”

He heard footsteps at the top if the stairs above him, and his heart started to beat faster.

“I hadn't thought about it,” he said, wanting very badly to escape. He knew who was approaching the top of the stairs. He could just sense it.

“It's been ages since I've been to a dance,” the Matron was saying, “only no one's asked me.”

Smith saw the black boots and hem of a black maid’s dress come into view through the upper railing. The figure stopped, as if hesitating. Maybe it wasn’t Martha. Maybe it was Jenny or one of the other maids. With his eye on the figure he started to ramble at the Matron.

“Well,” he said, “I should imagine that you'd be, er, I mean, I never thought you'd be one for. I mean, there's no reason why you shouldn't. If you do, you may not.” The figure began to descend the stairs. “I, I probably won't, but even if I did then I couldn't. I mean I wouldn't want to —“

It was Martha, with a look on her face that was utterly unreadable. Smith started to back away, wanting more than anything to flee.

“The stairs,” the Matron said.

“What about the stairs?” he asked.

“They're right behind you.”

But it was too late. He turned, caught his foot on the carpet, and went down, his books tumbling after him.


	12. A Very Bad Decision

Martha had hardly slept that night at all. She couldn't go back to her room to face Jenny. Her dress was ruined. She'd need to go and get another one from the TARDIS. Fortunately it was not difficult to get out of the school at night, just to get back in, and she slipped out through a door in the back wall and trudged to the TARDIS in the rain across the muddy fields.

Once inside, she peeled off her wet clothes and draped them over the console room railing. Shivering in her undergarments, she went into her own bathroom and ran a hot bath, stripped naked, and stepped into the steaming, foamy water. "At least the aliens are most likely here already," she thought darkly as the deep tub continued to fill around her. "At least this is almost over." But with that thought, she was filled with a sickening and confusing regret. The Doctor would return to himself - her Doctor! - and she'd see the man she loved again after so long. And yet. She knew that he didn't love her, and that he would not do to her the things that Smith so clearly wanted to do. This had been the opportunity to feel what it was like, to feel him inside of her, to feel what it was like for him to fuck her, she thought bluntly, and yet she had let it pass. As she should have. Good, she thought. And then: fuck. And then, good again. She wasn't a monster. She couldn't take advantage. She lay in the hot water and fantasized about him, thinking of how his naked body would feel against hers. She didn't think about the spanking or the caning. She imagined spending mornings in bed with him, waking beside him, making love to him. She felt sad and sexually frustrated and she just wanted it all to end. She would go to him in the morning, and open the watch, and they would escape. He'd find a way to defeat this alien family. If those lights they'd seen were any indication, then they'd already found them anyway. 

She wouldn't go back to the school tonight, she decided. She stepped out of the bath and into a fluffy robe that waited on a hook nearby. She felt exhausted. She walked down to the hall to the Doctor's room, went to his bed and pulled back the sheets. They looked clean, made perfectly without a wrinkle. She let the robe fall to the floor and climbed into the Doctor's bed, totally naked. She thought she felt the TARDIS shudder slightly, but it also could have been her imagination. 

"Lights," she said, and the low lighting in the room faded to almost black. She took one of his pillows and hugged it against her bare breasts, the soft fabric brushing against her nipples. She missed the Doctor. She missed Smith. She knew that tomorrow, for better or for worse, it would all be over. She lay there for hours, curled up in the Doctor's bed, before finally falling asleep.

***

When she saw him fall down the stairs and the Matron fussing over him, she felt more than ever that things had gone on long enough. He was disoriented, and it was easy to convince him to go back to his room. While the Matron went to get her medical bag, Martha sat him down in a chair by the window and took the canister of Chula ointment out of her apron pocket.

"Ouch!" he said, when she touched the back of his head. There was a nasty gash. He'd need stitches. Or at least, he normally would. She spread the ointment over the cut and almost at once it healed.

"What is that?" he asked her. "What are you doing?" She didn't answer. She set the ointment down on the windowsill went and began making his bed, thinking that she'd have to get him packed and take him back to the TARDIS at once. 

"Martha! Why won't you answer me? We've got to ---"

He was cut short when the Matron returned in a tizzy, fussing over him more than Martha thought was necessary. She seemed surprised when she inspected him for injuries but found nothing serious.

"You're lucky you weren't killed by that fall!" she said.

"Yes well," he said gloomily. "I've always been told I'm hard-headed."

Martha continued tidying the room, biting her tongue.

"I'm ordering you to rest," the Matron said. "However hardheaded you may be, you've had a nasty fall and you may be concussed. I'm going to go to the headmaster and let him know that I've forbid you from working today. And, sadly, you probably oughtn't do any dancing later."

After making him promise to check in with her in the afternoon, and to come right away if he was feeling unwell, the Matron left them, hardly seeming to notice that Martha was still in the room at all. Once she was gone, Martha stopped her tidying and straightened up, trying to hold her head high. This was not going to be easy. When she turned around, Smith was also standing. Staring at her. They regarded one another in loaded silence for a moment. His hair was sticking up from his fall and the Matron's ministrations, in a heartrendingly familiar way. His breathing seemed labored as he met her gaze, his chest rising and falling. He was in his waistcoat and no jacket, with his shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbow.

"Doctor," she said to him calmly.

"No," he said. "I don't need one. I feel ... actually I feel completely fine. I had a headache earlier but even that is gone now. I just ..." But he didn't dare say what the only thing was that was still bothering him.

"No, you misunderstand me," she said, taking a step towards him and shaking her head. "You're the Doctor. The man you've been dreaming about."

"I'm sorry Martha, but I don't follow you. What are you on about?"

"Here," she said. "I'll just have to show you." She went to the mantle to retrieve the fob watch, but it wasn't there!

"The watch! Your watch!" she exclaimed.

"My what?"

"The fob watch! You had a watch here on the mantle last night."

"I did?"

"Yes! What have you done with it?"

"I haven't the faintest idea, and honestly Martha, the way you're behaving, one would think that you're the one who hit their head, not me. But it doesn't matter. I'm very sorry, but I --"

"We have to find it!"

"Martha, I'm afraid I'm going to have to let you go."

"Yes Doctor, whatever you say, that doesn't matter now."

She ran her hands along the mantle, looked behind the pictures that were propped there. Her eyes darted around the room, trying to locate it, suddenly feeling quite scared. She didn't see it.

"Didn't you hear me?" he said to her, sounding angry. "I've just sacked you. Don't you care?"

"Okay, Mr. Smith? You've got to listen to me," she said. "You need to find that watch. It's extremely important. Because ... you're not Mr. Smith. That isn't your name. You're the Doctor. And I'm not your servant, I'm your friend. We might be in danger, I mean I know we are, but I don't know for sure yet if now is the right time. I just know that I've got to bring you back."

She was ignoring him, ignoring what he was saying to her. She did not even seem to care that he was sending her away! That ... that they wouldn't see each other anymore. No more seeing her at her duties around the school grounds. No more hearing her knock on his door in the morning. No more telling her his dreams.

"Please," she said to him calmly. "We have to leave here. Both of us. We have to get out of here at once."

Bravely, she stepped towards him while he watched her, incredulous. She slid one hand up his chest and then trailed her fingers up the edge of his jaw, brushing her thumb gently across his cheek. She looked up into his dark eyes.

"I know this doesn't make sense, and that you're frightened," she said softly, "but you must listen to me. We're in danger. We have to get away."

But it was too much. The proximity was too much. His arms went around her and he pulled her against him, his forehead touching hers.

"Oh god, Martha, how I want you," he said. It was almost a groan. He moved his lips down towards hers but she turned away. His lips landed on her throat instead, where he opened his mouth, his teeth scraping across her skin. His fingers raked across her back and he pushed his hips against her. She tried to push herself out of his embrace but he was too strong.

"Don't," she murmured. "I need the watch. You don't want this." And something in him seemed to break.

"Oh god, yes I do."

He turned her around so that her back was against him and swung her towards his desk. He pushed her down. Enough was enough. He would have her, and everything else be damned. He could hear his heart pounding in his ears, but there was something strange about it. There was something like an echo in his blood. His pulse was galloping, rat-tat-tat-tat, rat-tat-tat-tat, like the sound of drums. He felt strangely as if he were about to lose himself. This is wrong, wrong, wrong, something inside of him was saying, but for some reason it only spurred him on, hardening him. It was this very voice which he needed to escape. To disobey. He was down against her now, fumbling at both of their clothes while she struggled, his need desperate. He had to hide himself, to avoid some oncoming blackness that threatened to roll over him and erase him, and the place, the only place that he would find to be safe was in her. He pushed her skirts up and out of the way and tore her drawers aside, staring for a moment at the gorgeous darkness between her legs, and then was down on her again, fumbling at his trousers. He was too hard, too large, he couldn’t free himself at that angle.

“Doctor, Doctor!” she cried out under him.

“Why are you calling me that!” he said angrily, but it seemed to unclasp something in him. Fury. Something he needed to escape. He would not be denied. He held her down with one hand on her back while he straightened up to reach the buttons at his waist. One more tug of the fabric and he was out and hot in his hand. He held himself against her wet opening, and groaned, the ache in him almost unbearable. She cried out, slipping free and away, pushing herself up onto her hands, her back against his chest now, leaning back, trying to escape him. But she was wedged between his legs and the desk. He was too strong.

“Stop it,” she cried, “you don’t want this!”

He reached around with his free hand and covered her mouth.

*

“Please be quiet,” she heard Smith’s voice say in her ear, sounding angry, or was it panicked? She could bite his hand, she thought, resist. But the fingers that were clasped against her lips, parting them, were the Doctor’s fingers, and she found she didn’t want to. She felt him push her back down on the desk, his full weight on top of her, his mouth against her ear, his breath ragged.

Then she saw it. The fob watch! It was right there, on the edge of the desk, half hidden under some papers. Not really thinking, she reached out for it, felt her fingers graze it’s edge before Smith gathered her arm with his, pulling her back. He perched them both on their elbows, his hips pinning her, his hands on hers. His cock slid down along her slit, unable to find her opening, stroking her clit with his length as he fumbled. She cried out. They were so close. He groaned again.

Not like this, she thought. She couldn’t let him do this to himself. But then, suddenly ,there was his voice in her ear again. Not Smith’s voice. His voice. Softer, higher, with more melody. The accent different.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he said. “I can’t stop it.” And she felt something unfurl inside of her, all of her reserves breaking. She arched back against him and he found her, pushing into her warmth and wetness, filling her. He let out a strangled cry, thrusting against her, into her, hard, all of him, shuddering and erratic.

“Oh god oh god oh god,” he said, and then he was coming, exploding deep inside her, the head of his cock throbbing against her tightness as his climax pumped what seemed like years of unfulfilled desires into her with the thundering violence and tender, delicious sweetness of all of time and space.

He lay motionless on top of her, breathing hard and still erect, as the last of his orgasm spasmed out of him. And then it overtook her suddenly; beautifully, lifting, her muscles fluttering around him. As if sensing what was happening to her, Smith pressed her down harder against the desk, his arms tight around her. Her body clenched around his cock again and again and then erupted in silent waves of pleasure. It was like each pulse was a question, and his hardness inside of her was the answer, answering yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. His hands on her were tender now. Her eyes closed and her mouth fell open as the peak continued, and then grew, and peaked again, hovering there at the top note for what seemed like forever, like a clear bell ringing and ringing, while he wept into her tussled dark hair.


	13. In For A Penny

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Smut and angst, be warned.

Martha felt herself returning to herself, her ears ringing. She was suddenly aware of the golden morning light that filled the room. The Doctor was still on top of her, inside of her, the stiffness of his satiated desire beginning finally to soften. He pulled out of her and stood up, backing away. She reached back and fixed her drawers, pushed her skirts down to cover herself. Her body still throbbed from her climax, unlike any she had ever experienced. 

He wouldn't look at her. Fixing his clothing, he went and sat down on the edge of his bed and put his head in his hands. To her great dismay he appeared to be crying. Great, she thought. I've wrecked the Doctor. Broken him. He thinks he's the predator at the moment when really, who am I kidding? It's me. He'll never forgive me for this.

"Please don't," she said softly. "Please."

"I'm a monster," he said, wiping his face on his sleeve. "I am. I'm ... so sorry." But the voice was Smith's. Not his. Whatever flicker of himself that had been drawn to the surface was buried again now. She watched has he smoothed his hair down to the side as if unconsciously emphasizing this point.

"Listen," she said, coming to perch beside him on the edge of the bed. He continued to sit with his head in his hands. She felt his ejaculate seep out of her and into her skirts, but she tried not to think about the possible ramifications. Considering the magnitude of what had happened within her, it could have been her own wetness, too. Could Time Lords and humans interbreed? Was he really completely human now? For the moment, this alien "Family" and the lights they'd seen in the sky last night were pushed from her mind. 

"This isn't your fault," she said, putting her hand on his knee. 

"Isn't it?" he asked, looking at her now, distraught. "I should have been able to control ... to stop ..."

"No," she said. "You couldn't. I ... I felt it, too. I feel it."

"Do you?" he said in a rush, his eyes tearing again. "I thought you did, but then again, I couldn't be sure."

"You'll have to stop with the tears at once though," she said, with a sympathetic laugh. "Like knock it off, yeah? Otherwise I'll start too, and you don't want that."

He laughed a little and wiped his eyes. "No. Can't have that. God, look at me. What must you think of me? A brute one minute and crying like a woman the next. I don't ... feel like myself. I must be ill." His voice hardened. "I've got to get away from this place."

"Yes," she said. "We should get away." A plan was forming in her mind. She'd take him to the TARDIS. He'd be surprised at first. It would be hard for him to grasp, but at least they'd be safe inside. They could wait out the remaining weeks in there so that the Family wouldn't detect them. Or maybe they could open the watch. She wasn't sure.

"I appreciate that you're willing to take the responsibility for your ... wantonness," he said. "But it's me who is to blame. I am the master here."

It would have been so easy to blame him, indeed. To claim that she didn't have a choice. Had she had a choice? Could she have resisted? Somehow it didn't matter. She knew the Doctor was her responsibility, and she'd failed him. His number one rule had been to protect people from him if necessary, but she had not been able to protect even herself. Besides, if the Doctor was aware of any of this, then he would know everything anyway and it was no use pretending.

"Now that I can think," he said, pivoting to face her, "it isn't fair of me to sack you. I won't send you away."

He looked stern, his emotions under control again. She didn't know what to say. It was like he was someone stuck in a dream and she couldn't wake him. 

"I'm not going anywhere," she said.

"Good," he said, with a strange gleam in his eye. "But maybe we both ought to leave. Maybe to the colonies. Somewhere where people won't ... talk so much. Where they'll leave a man and his servant in peace. And where you would be ... less conspicuous."

She couldn't stop herself.

"Alright, look mate," she said. His eyes widened. "You and I are in danger and it's got nothing to do with what the Edwardian tosspots at this silly school think, about me being black, or you being a bloody pervert or us shagging in the cupboard between your classes while I continue waiting on you hand and foot in India or whatever it is you've got in mind."

"Martha!"

"You're the Doctor! Your blue box is waiting for you, and there are people who need you. All across the stars. We just came here to hide from some enemies. Do you remember the things you told me about ? The metal men, and how you and I were on the moon?"

"Oh Martha, no," he said kindly but condescendingly. "I didn't mean to deceive you. Those were just stories. They aren't real. Just ... fantasies. I couldn't stop dreaming about you. I didn't mean to confuse--"

His eyes became heavy lidded and drowsy and he inched towards her on the edge of the bed, his gaze glancing off of her lips, her throat. She looked towards his desk where the watch was. At least she had it in sight. He pulled her towards him and took her face in his hands. He kissed her softly on one cheek and then the other.

"We can't," she said, turning her face to the side. "Listen, why don't we get cleaned up and go for a walk? There's something in the woods I need to show you." She thought of how he'd made her feel just now, and shuddered. Would that be it then? Back to the TARDIS, and their sick little game was ended?

He laughed, softly, placing kisses along her jaw and down her throat to the the base of her black dress's high collar. "I'm comfortable here."

She turned towards him to protest, but his mouth found hers, silencing her. Almost instantly she felt herself melting against him, her lips parting to let him in. His hands went to her waist, pulling her closer. It was clear that he wasn't an experienced kisser, but he was pliant, and a quick learner. He let her take control of the kiss, matching her in intensity when she brought their tongues into play. 

In for a penny, in for ten million pounds, she thought as she pulled back slightly for a moment, looking into his dark eyes glazed over with lust.

"Martha," he breathed.

"Shut up, don't talk," she said, falling back into the kiss. Her pulse was racing. He smiled.

"Don't speak to me like that," he said. "I don't want this to mean that you forget your place."

"Sorry." She could barely escape his ravenous lips long enough to speak.

"Sorry *Mr. Smith*," he said, grasping her wrist and moving her hand to his lap. She felt him through the fabric of his trousers. He was hard again and very large. Oh god.

"Sorry Mr. Smith." She reached up and dragged her fingers roughly through his hair, pushing him back a little, her nails grazing his scalp, taking him by surprise, undoing the smoothing down of it that he'd attempted just a moment before and returning it to its unkempt glory. He moaned into her mouth and leaned towards her. He put his hand on her hip and then ran it down the length of her thigh, pulling her knee over his. He continued to run his hand all the way down to her ankle, then moved back up again, under her skirt this time, until his fingers reached bare skin. She pulled at the collar of her dress and he immediately moved to unbutton it for her, his fingers surprisingly deft.

"Don't rip it," she whispered.

"I won't."

He removed her maid's cap and the rest of the pins from her hair. He was so tender, it was easy to forget what he'd just done; that he'd just bent her over his desk and taken her without her consent and despite physical struggle, albeit one she'd only half-committed to. She had a sudden and unpleasant flash of the Doctor's face, looking angrily at her in the low light of the TARDIS. This couldn't end well. You should have tried harder, she imagined him saying. Oh Doctor, she thought, kissing John Smith even more passionately.

It’s not the Doctor, she thought, as he removed her shoes, dress and petticoats, and flung her down onto her back on the bed, kissing her neck, his hands roaming over her shoulders, her arms, the tops of her corseted breasts. Not the Doctor, as he pulled her chemise down to reach her nipples, swirling his tongue over first one and then the other, sucking them until she cried out; as his hands gripped the hard boning of her corseted waist, squeezing even tighter, forceful, pressing her into the mattress.

It’s not the Doctor, she reminded herself, as he unclipped her garters and removed her black stockings, using them to tie her to the posts that jutted out from the molding above the bed, one for each wrist; as his hands, maybe trembling a little, took hold of her ripped drawers and slid them off of her; as he kicked off his shoes and removed his waistcoat, trousers and underwear and knelt between her open thighs. It’s not the Doctor, she thought. Its not him, it’s not him, as he positioned himself and then pushed into her, tender and resisting, as he wrapped her legs around him, one arm around her waist and the other supporting himself, as he rocked and thrust into her.

Not the Doctor. Not the Doctor. But she didn't care. Oh, Doctor. She felt herself starting to come again, even though he seemed nowhere near coming himself. She wanted to say his name out loud, but she knew it would be the wrong name, and would stop him, and the guilt of it only made her come harder.

When it was over he collapsed onto her chest, covered in sweat. He undid her ties and pulled her close to him, kissing her wrists, her closed eyelids; drawing the covers over them and wrapping her up in his long limbs. Exhausted, they were both asleep almost at once.

*** 

John Smith stood atop a high, white wall. It must have been dusk. The sky stretched out in a brilliant orange, fading into scarlet where it touched a range of far off purple mountains capped with snow. Below the wall, a wide field of tall red grass rippled like water as the winds passed over it, making a hushing sound. The wind died, and was silent, and then picked up again: hush, hush. He was filled with a sense of well-being, and his body felt light.

There was a man seated on the wall. He sat down beside him and saw that the man was crying.

“Why are you crying?” Smith asked the man.

“I’m not crying,” the man said softly, kindly. “You are.”

And sure enough, Smith touched his cheeks and felt that they were wet with tears.

“Why am I crying?” Smith asked the man.

“Because it’s all going to end,” the man said. “You have to go.”

“But I don’t want to go,” Smith said.

“Nobody does,” said the Doctor.

The two men sat in silence.

“Why are you doing this to her?” the Doctor asked.

Smith knew he meant Martha. He knew he meant the rolling darkness and the fury, the things he was forced to do to escape it. The lightening that raged in him with it’s twin commands of 'create' and 'destroy,' and which mostly vanished during his waking hours except when he looked at her.

“I’m not doing them,” Smith said. “You are.”

The man, the Doctor, seemed to consider this, and let out a great sigh. He moved his hands through his hair in thought until it stood on end. He pulled at his ear thoughtfully, squinting into the distance.

“But I'm you,” the Doctor said.

“Exactly,” Smith replied.

And then he was there. Just him. Alone again under the orange sky, listening to the hush of the wind in the red grasses.

***


End file.
